…and in general, I dislike millenials in the aggregate (I think maybe my older kids count, so I can’t speak in specifics).

Exhibit: this damned Chevrolet ad campaign, that I was subjected to every couple of minutes while I was streaming a tv show the other day (streaming video via a set-top box; kinda millenial, though I used a 50 inch tv rather than a 4 inch phone screen, so not that millenial).

“Hey focus group, give us yourimpression of this Chevy Cruze, using only emojis!“

Um…no. First of all, focus group ads are awful. These “real people, not actors” (coughBULLSHITcough) are awful. the Chevy Cruze, is, having driven one for a couple days as a rental while the insurance people were sorting things out, decidedly average.

This emoji business is insulting.

The guys over at jalopnik (including someone in the comments who claims to be an honest-to-goodness millenial who works at GM) have a lot more insightful analysis on this, but the general thought is…nobody seems to know how to market to millenials, who, according to marketing data, aren’t necessarily buying many new cars anyway, and when they do market cars to them, they don’t actually talk about the car, but rather just vomit out emojiphonewifipoochie at them.

Now, I know few people who love their phones more than your typical millenial (one of those people is my wife, but I forgive her), but I would assume that one who would be looking to buy a car would be looking at more than built-in-wifi (which is just an LTE data plan you have to pay for anyway) when the phone in your pocket already does that, and they’re certainly not going to buy a car based on the emoji ad.

I guess this says something about General Motors, though, which kind of saddens me.

I grew up a Chevy kid. Blue collar rust belt America? Chevy trucks and Camaros were my jam. I’ve owned a lot of GMs over the years (Chevys and Pontiacs), for probably much longer than I should have because it didn’t occur to me to look anywhere else, even when the alternator blew on every single model I owned, and had some sort of weird electrical problem after a while. I had two Pontiacs when GM killed the brand; one I bought from a Saturn dealer.

I can actually kind of thank General Motors for getting me off of them, too. My first “new car” was a Pontiac Vibe, which I loved with a love I reserve few few other things*. It was a Corolla until the last step on the assembly line when they put on the Pontiac front clip. The Toyota engineering in the body and frame saved me from serious injury when some idiot in an Isuzu rear-ended me at 40mph when I was stopped in traffic.

When I went to replace it, I got a Toyota. Which I traded in on a Scion (whose ads are also weird and laden with James Franco, but are the only marque through which I could get a Corolla hatchback -with a manual transmission and upgraded suspension- in 2016…this means I do research and comparison shop, like a smart person should), which is another Toyota. I replaced the other Pontiac (before the wiring went weird) with a Mazda. The ownership experience, the buying experience, the service experience…was so much better than with General Motors products.

I don’t think I’d buy a Chevy today. The products are probably better now than when I was buying them, but they are, on the whole, pretty average. More “beige” than a Camry or Altima (yes, I dissed Toyota a bit – Camrys are solid, but boring). I can get equivalent or better engineering and efficiency, and a decidedly better service experience for probably less money, along with a lot fewer blown alternators.

…and nobody gets condescended to (and yes, I’m even counting “grounded to the ground” here) with Japanese kawaii shorthand as part of the bargain.

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*-some of those thing: My wife. My dear departed tortoiseshell cat Calypso. Playing music. Wasabi peas.