I was checking out some story on CNET the other day when I scrolled past an ad inserted in the body of the article. I tried to ignore it, like we all try to ignore advertisements, but I couldn’t help but give this one a second scan. I found it deeply worrisome.

Initially, this one got my dander up because I have a particular antipathy for spoiled children. I hate the sort of advertisements that insist that the solution to your kids’ incessant whining about not having Product X is either buying their Product Y, or perhaps buying Product X from them at a cheaper price than the next vendor. Excuse me, but in my house, "no" means "no". The response to whining is a stone wall. I don’t give two shits about the cheap plastic crap they’re trying to stuff down my throat through my kids.

That’s just a garden-variety irritant, though, easily shrugged off and quickly forgotten. What truly troubles me about this AOL advertisement is the weird pedo vibe this ad is sending out. Usually, advertisements depict teenagers as hip, perky, or cool, depending on the target audience. Not this one. This "teen" is sleazy.

First off, the kid looks slightly too young to be a teenager (about ten or twelve by my reckoning). By itself, this isn’t a big deal, but the tinted sunglasses, which carry a definitely precocious subtext, along with the jaded, pouty look on her face, create a disturbing implication of sexuality. Such messages, I have it on good authority, are entirely malapropos when combined with images of barely-pubescent children.

The "my teenage daughter" caption was probably inserted in a ham-handed attempt to reinforce the old cliché about teenage girls and telephones, but still manages to come off as supporting the whole Lolita context instead. Maybe Dad is swapping her photo around his alt.binaries.images.creepyfuckers newsgroup for some images of their own kids. The more I look at it, the more unsettling the semiotics become. Who are they trying to target with this ad? Is the AOL profit model of "pedophiles will pay us money to set up their chat rooms" being carried over into mobile phones? The mind reels as the gut churns.