Usually I hit the Mute button whenever there are adverts on radio, ’cause there often is a lot of annoying crap there – which I find confirmed when occasionally I do hear some ads, like shortly before New Year’s Eve.

The ad I’m refering to here was, on its own, not that bad – no silly singing around or overenthused proclamations of the oh so sensational offers etc. –, but that a brand of champagne, Mumm, that is (German), advertises the year horoscope on its website on the radio, well, even though it’s common to greet the new year with a glass of champagne, that’s a bit… odd. Since I was curious about the nonsense they babble in that horoscope, I opened that site – and it FAILs usability and content in multiple ways, I think:

FAIL #1: The start page

Translation: “Accessing this site is only allowed for persons of age. Please enter your date of birth.”

A ridiculously noneffective age verification – might this even make some visitors expect more than a little alcohol? If at least this was effective and protect children from nonsense such as horoscopes…

FAIL #2: Loud music

For if you have jumped this huge hurdle of your date of birth, a cheap pop-ish jingle including spoken slogan booms at you, and no volume control or mute button on the site. Luckily it’s “only” 15 seconds long – and lucky are those who have a Mute button on the keyboard. But the sentence “Mumm ist, wenn man’s macht” = “Courage is if you do it” does fit somehow…

FAIL #3: The horoscope itself

Which was written by a certain Michael Allgeier, also not unknown (German) in the astro scene. Again with a date-of-birth selection dialog – however, even though labeled “Your personal horoscope 2009”, there is only one text for each span of ten days. And with the ususal newspaper horosope wish-wash with general section and sections about love/relationship, job/money and fitness/wellness all over.

And they added a little lexicon which of course is so impudent to take all this stuff serious and describe astrology itself as (my translation):

A thousands of years old empirical science that puts man in a certain relationship system to the star constellations. This symbol system allows the drawing of conclusions about the individual abilities and problem areas of a person. Certain prognostic techniques also allow considerations regarding future developments or events. Also statements about relationships among persons or entire peoples can be done with the help of astrology.

(Needless to say that astrologers (a) disagree on their statements and (b) in the way they reached them – even if (c) they just say the usual shallow stuff. Needless at least among those who don’t blindly follow their astrologers…)

Somehow I got the impression that someone consumed too much of his own product to get the idea to do all this that big and in a serious manner…

See also:

• Skeptic’s Dictionary: Astrology

Photo: vierdrie/sxc