I used to work in advertising research. We tested TV and print advertising. Sometimes Internet ads, but there's less money in that (still), so the company mostly stuck to the big money stuff. Part of my job was watching commercials and trying to explain why they worked or didn't work--my judgments supported by data from dozens, if not hundreds, of regular people who gave their opinions about the ads in question.

I hate commercials. I rarely watch scripted shows in real time because of the commercials. I don't have Tivo. I still tape shows on the VCR and just fast-forward the old fashioned way. But since I don't watch reruns of sports (I only watch them in real time) every time out is a click on the mute button. Or, even more often, I have music playing, so I don't have to hear the pitches. This is my March Madness.

So I still see commercials (without sound most of the time, but they are repeated so much, I tend to get infected with the vocal pitch eventually), because the TV is like a glowing god. It draws the eye. And I bitch, bitch, bitch.

In Roger Dodger, a film about an advertising copy writer who teaches his nephew to pick up women, the main character explains you cannot sell something without making people feel bad first. Then you can fix their problem with a product.

In TV advertising there is never a straight sell. There is never an ad saying what the product does and that you should buy it. They are, in fact, using extreme exaggerations and flat out lies to sell you things you don't need.

McDonald's is selling coffee and breakfast by showing a man who has been married for ten years, but didn't realize it until he had the great coffee at McDonald's (the coffee, apparently, woke him up to his situation). The punch line is the guy hoping he hasn't married anyone else in his ten year haze.

There is a series of beer ads where a pasty boy/man (who wears a helmet and goggles everywhere) has such a hard time dealing with every aspect of his life (although most of the situations have to do with hanging out with his improbably good looking and docile girlfriend), he must have four or five guys force feed him with beer to make it through.

As a rule, beer commercials are the most unrealistic of the bunch. But I'm sure they make more sense if you're completely drunk.

Jessica Simpson is pushing cheese-infused pizza. Because, y'know, eating the pizza would be just like, uh, eating Jessica.

Microsoft is selling its software by telling business owners the most important part of any business is the people (so make it easy on them, use the software everyone else uses), even though my recent job experience is that business owners see themselves as the most important part of their business (and they don't have to know how to use any specific type of software). If you look at CEO pay and bonus packages, you might agree with me, too.

We are told we should fly somewhere on Southwest Airlines because we have to get away from embarrassing situations in our real life: like over-inflating a basketball (causing it to explode) or using a small trampoline to jump halfway over a house while trying to dunk the basketball. Get out of town, you freak! Everyone's gonna laugh at you! Even though no one actually saw you do either of these things.

A year ago, Degree deodorant ran ads that were "selling" a series of seemingly limp wristed dolls who never took a chance in life, so they didn't need to use deodorant. And then, at the end, Degree tried to tell everyone not to identify with the dolls they showed for 25 seconds of the ad, so they should use Degree. My company tested these ads.

They didn't do well, but Degree ran the ad during the Superbowl anyway. So they spent tens of thousands for us to tell them the ads wouldn't work, then didn't listen and spent millions on a one shot Superbowl spot (and, even after that didn't work, they kept running them for the next couple of months). But because the people who make advertising are geniuses (their word), they cannot hear bad news. They don't like to be criticized, because they are making art (I'm not making this up). So, regularly, we would soften our opinion of the ads. I never got to actually say: this ad sucks and this is why. We had to finesse language, because the grown up people who spend millions of dollars making this crap that pays for the "free" entertainment we watch have very soft skins and cannot take the truth.

Which, I think, is why they can't use the truth to sell anything. They don't know what the truth is. Many times it felt like we were having to bullshit the bullshitters.

Degree is now running ads showing stunt men going to work. I don't think the ad actually shows the stunt men using the product. But those stunt men, they don't sweat do they? Get it?

You might be saying, well, the advertising must be working. You just spent a whole page and a half talking about them. Well, for advertising to work, it must turn potential customers into actual customers. And I don't use any of the products I've described. Not even Microsoft Office.

You can hit the mute button anytime now.

Matt Worley is currently an amateur advertising critic, since the company he worked for decided he was too expensive and irritatingly truthful to continue working for it.