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Humor
Gas Station Television
Yes, it’s a real thing.
Filling up your vehicle with gas used to be a calming, almost Zen-like activity. Nothing to hear but the steady click-click-click of your life savings draining away. Nothing to look at except the numbers spinning past what your parents paid for their first house.
It was three to five minutes of badly needed solitude.
And then one day, after I slid my credit card into the slot and made my selection, I squeezed the handle on the nozzle and the entire pump came to life like an evil robot lurching awake.
There was now a television screen embedded in the pump because of course there was. God forbid that even one second of our miserable, short, pathetic lives should be free of someone jabbering at us about nothing from a video screen.
So much for serenity.
Here I am, just trying to fill up my truck with climate catastrophe juice, and I have to watch Channing Tatum for three minutes at the same volume used by the CIA to keep political prisoners awake.
Yes, it could be worse, but the point is that I didn’t expect to watch anything for three minutes. Because it’s a gas pump.
This wonder of modern entertainment is called GSTV, which I presume stands for Gas Station Television although I can’t verify this because I didn’t find anything that actually said that, mostly because I didn’t look very hard.
This is what their website says about GSTV:
Consumers are captivated with our broadcasted show as they fuel up their vehicle at your location. Utilize this opportunity to advertise on screen and reach your target audience, as 89% of people who visit a GSTV station watch or listen while fueling.
Captivated.
Meaning, “can’t get away from the ads”, which has always been television's ultimate goal. Finally, the perfect audience, trapped while they fuel up the vehicle without which they cannot survive.
Gas Station TV. That’s the best name they could come up with. It sounds like something you’d watch in Hell.
“Here’s the dentist’s chair you’ll…
