Seen on the train today:
Advertisement headline was “I’m glad I got tested for / syphlis. You will be too.”
Someone cut out “I’m glad I got… syphilis” with a knife, apparently to take home. Oddly enough, this wasn’t all that noticeable; it’s easy to see where someone’s taken a marker or white paint to an ad, but the backlighting on subway ads means that a cut-out doesn’t provide that much contrast (provided the rest of the ad isn’t a dark background, which would be rare).

However, it would have been much funnier (for the public, at least) if the vandals had cut out “tested for.” The result: “I’m glad I got… syphilis. You will be too” — a subversion both of the original text and of the premise of most advertising in general.

Of course, this is not to say that I don’t think sexually active people should get tested for syphilis and other diseases. Ideally, we wouldn’t need public service adverts for this kind of thing, since universal health care would ensure that everyone had regular access to health services.