Fully Functional Phil: 'It's your ass, ace'

The dose-response curve for the U.S. ironic reflex, drawn in one product line. The kid version's catchphrase is "No-ho-ho-ho way"; the adolescent-targeted version wraps the identical life-saving warning in "a great deal more ironic self-parody," the catchphrase escalating to a shrugged "It's your ass, ace." The older the audience, the more irony the sincere message must be cut with to land — sincerity titrated down as the reflex titrates up, until by adolescence a warning against the cartridge that kills its viewers is only audible as a sneer. The book's diagnosis of American address rendered as a marketing spec.