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"Eat Pray Love" viral marketing offers surprisingly cynical take on relationships

By Peter Smith on Jul 19th, 2010  |  Comments (3)

Check out this deliciously vapid Facebook ad for the Eat Pray Love movie. Are you "in a relationship," but not sure about how to "relate," so to speak, to "your girl?" Well, it's easy to "impress" her with a single click and the revelation that you do have a sensitive side, and that sensitive side has middlebrow taste in film, as well as the disposable income for two movie tickets. Shared interests are important! If you "like" what she "likes," she's sure to "like" you!

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Comments ( 3 )

God I hated that book! Movie can't be any better.
SR commented on Jul 19 10 at 3:35 pm
Some marketing person thought they were so clever dreaming this up. That's hilarious.
Keli commented on Jul 19 10 at 4:07 pm
So after having an early cocktail, here are my thoughts about this book. It's a piece of shit for two reasons: 1) having lived in Italy (3 years) and India (2 years), I can honestly say that Gilbert"s portrayal of these areas are romanticized musings of a postcard. It's like she picked up a glossy postcard from Piazza di Spagna, looked at it, and began to gush flowery descriptions of this beautiful place she sees in the postcard. It's bullshit. If you have lived in Rome, you know that her gushings of the city are unrealistic. It's especially with India, where one city block separates the privileged wealthy from the slummy poor. 2) This type of "journey of self discovery" was because she was wealthy. In fact, this entire book reminded me of all the Midtown yuppies, and Wall Street morons I used to run into in Mumbai that would try to sound cool about their meeting with a yogi blah blah blah blah. It was the travelogue of a rich person. I'm going to venture that 99% of her readers could not (even if they wanted to) leave their jobs and families to go on a year-long vacation to exotic locales. Her bullshit is not grounded in empirical reality for most people. However, what her book does do is encourage losers to live vicariously through her, feeling the rush of self-awareness and personal metamorphosis, without getting off their fat asses and actually doing something fun or meaningful with their own lives. It's pathetic. For most of her readers, you don't need a year-long journey, you need therapy. Unfortunately, there are enough pathetic losers buying into this bullshit that they will drive revenue for this movie.
SR commented on Jul 19 10 at 4:51 pm

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