Hey, how about a fun Ancestry.com ad that showed a horrible
tragedy being averted due to their service? We mostly all know about Oedipus,
the tragic character who killed his father and married his mother and blinded himself, right? Well, if Oedipus
had looked up his family tree on Ancestry.com as the prologue to his famously
tragic story, he could have avoided his patricide, avoided his incest and his mother’s suicide, avoided
blinding himself by gouging his eyes out, and his whole family would have been
reunited and they would all have lived happily ever after!
So in this (joke) ad for Ancestry.com, we see Oedipus
looking up his family on Ancestry.com because he’d never known his parents.
Well, wouldn’t you know it, but shortly thereafter, Oedipus runs into his dear
old dad on the road, and recognizing him from his picture on Ancestry.com, he
introduces himself as his father’s long lost son, at which point he is
recognized by his father, who also looked his son up on Ancestry.com in the
hopes of tracking him down and returning him to his family and birthright. And
so Oedipus is welcomed into a loving home with open arms, he becomes the crown
prince of the kingdom, and the royal family has a big party like in the parable
about the Prodigal Son. And having averted one of the most heinous tragedies of
all time, they all live happily ever after, and all thanks to Ancestry.com! And
if everyone used it, there would never be any more tragedies, and everyone
would live happily ever after! Yea, Ancestry.com!
And to really rub it in, the ad could start with Oedipus
stabbing his eyes out, like at the end of the play, and we hear his voiceover
say: “This was me before Ancestry.com. I killed my father and married my mother
and went mad and blinded myself from grief. Oh, but after using Ancestry.com,
look what happened to me instead!” And then they run the story as I listed
above, with the happy family reunion and jubilant celebratory festivities,
showing how just looking up his family on Ancestry.com saved him, his father,
his mother, and the kingdom. And it would prove that if you don’t use
Ancestry.com, you’ll probably murder your father, marry your mother, she’ll
hang herself, and you’ll blind yourself. So you’d better hurry up and use
Ancestry.com already, or else…!
