Gogo triggers gales of giggles
HELLO! Hello! Hello! Is this thing on? Hello!
And so we meet Gogo, up close and shouting into the screen.
She pops up on her astonished grandson’s work computer while he’s trying to virtually present his quarterly report.
“Gogo, I’m in a meeting,” he cries. Much of the rest of the conversation is lost as peals of giggles let loose from the couch. Every time. It never gets old (pun intended).
I immediately recognise myself doing something like that. And clearly see my younger family’s horrified faces at the technological tomfoolery. I am that gogo and I want to claim her as my own.
The effectiveness of an advert rests on whether you remember what it is advertising. Thanks to the lively chuckles, I haven’t quite heard what the connection to the product is, but I do know it’s a Wimpy ad. Brand associated with happy laughter, so mission accomplished. Kudos to the advertising team.
One of its successes is that it has broad appeal: oldies will know how frustrating it is to not have a complete handle on these “new” zoomy/video call thingies, and young people will absorb the message that it’s a meal-onthe-go for the person in the fancy corner office having important meetings.
For all I know, this Gogo office invasion is improbable. If ever I have to do a Zoom thing, I have to get an invitation and a link and the first thing I do is shut the camera down and hit the mute button. I’m certain I couldn’t do it by accident. But never let facts ruin a funny ad.
Video calls, on the other hand, are far easier and wide open to Gogo moments.
My friend and colleague Frank keeps getting close-up shots of the inside of his mom’s ear. Sometimes she doesn’t realise she has pushed video call instead of the call button and instead video calls her ear, to much mirth.
They are the Big Brother of phonedom. Unless you are showing somebody something as you do it or as you see it, why do you need to be on video? It’s highly intrusive and the people you are speaking to either know what you look like or don’t need to know. Specially if you are working from home in your comfy jarmies and you last combed your hair in March 2020.
Maybe it hit my funny bone so hard because it reminds me of my own gran. August is her birthday month and I have been missing her more than usual.
As I age, there are so many things I want to tell her. How I now really understand what she meant when she complained that everyone was too young to know what she was talking about when, for instance, she described her joy at the invention of the ballpoint pen. And how arthritis is really sore and I feel her frustration of not being able to do things she had loved doing and done without a thought before. I also want to hear her stories – again – without telling her, yes, I know, Gran, you told me.
Gran would have enjoyed Gogo as much as I do – and we would have shared some hearty laughter on a phone call.
THE NEWS this week that Liliesleaf Farm is to close indefinitely, ostensibly yet another victim of the pandemic and its associated lockdown, is very sad. The fact that the announcement was made in the month in which South Africans are gifted a public holiday to celebrate their heritage made the announcement all the more poignant.
It’s an incredibly important historical site; it was the underground headquarters of the ANC’S armed wing umkhonto we Sizwe and the nerve centre for the congress alliance’s Struggle against apartheid between 1961 and 1963.
Unlike other older museums which are often forbidding to anyone but the keenest academic, the modern restoration rendered the site accessible
NEVER let a good crisis go to waste! This is a now famous line used to great effect by Rahm Emmanuel, former chief of staff to American president Barack Obama. It was a central pillar in the administration’s response to the global financial crisis of 2008.
It cemented the 44th president’s place in US history because his policy programme helped the country and arguably the world to avoid another Great Depression. As Bloomberg noted, by the time he left office American job growth had logged its longest expansion dating back to 1939.
Of course the quote cannot be attributed to Emmanuel – but belongs to one of the great orators of the last century, Winston Churchill. But to the epigram Emmanuel added, “What I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before”.
Covid-19 has been a crisis that has wrought untold economic devastation around the world. Certainly the human cost has been hard to bear with every country affected globally. Who of us does not know someone who has succumbed to the deadly pandemic?
In the initial stages, the South African government did not let the crisis go to waste. Following the first confirmed reported case on March 5, 2020, the country adopted a risk-adjusted strategy and went into a hard lockdown within three weeks. This was to contain and mitigate the spread of the virus, as cases seemed to be growing exponentially. There were genuine fears that in some of the densely populated areas with poor housing and sanitation, the pandemic was going to decimate communities.
Whilst President Ramaphosa was recognised for responding swiftly to the challenge, the star of the show was his Health minister, Dr Zweli Mkhize.