'Need A Car? Date Our Son' ads raise questions, go viral

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I would’ve written this sooner, but I was texting with Abraham Lincoln, who asked me to share this message: “Only believe half of what you read online lol.” The ad you see on this page has been making its laps around the digital Nürburgring – also known as “the internet,” specifically the car-enthusiast parts – for the past few days. It typically comes, on Facebook, reddit, and Instagram, with this caption: He’s smart but socially very shy. “Date” him and bring him our of his shell before he leaves for college. In exchange, we’ll give you a 2004 Buick Regal. Clean, rust-free, 40k miles.

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[UPDATE 2023/03/09: Surprise! Detective Kana was right, and the post is indeed promotional marketing for No Hard Feelings, which hits theatres June 23. We’ve posted the trailer below, but really aren’t all that jazzed up about it outside of the Buick; if you see it, let us know how you liked it! We also updated the image at the top, but the otherwise unedited original article, from before the mystery was revealed, continues below. —Ed.]

While it’s got some people outraged with its promise of a solid, clean, and low-mileage (40,000 miles) 19-year-old Buick Regal in exchange for becoming a romantic partner for a young man, I implore you to pause for a moment and ask yourself: is it the weak LS trim with a measly 200 horsepower, or the gritty GS with 240 fiery ponies?

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More seriously, such a trade obviously raises a host questions (like, y’know, “what!?”). We should note the ad has “date” in quotation marks, leaving some room for interpretation: that could be a stroll in Central Park (based on the car’s New York plates) or perhaps a lively evening at an off-Broadway performance. Or it could be, well, you know, the other thing — I believe it was called “necking” way back in 2004.

Interested people are asked to email dateourson@gmail.com, a request pre-empted by the lol-worthy tagline “serious inquiries only.” For research purposes, I sent them an email and received this as an auto-response: Hiyaa! Thanks for your interest in “dating” our son. We have had a lot of responses already, but plan to make our final decision Thursday, March 9th. We’ll be in touch soon! Allison & Laird.

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Moving on to the serious portion of this article. The mystery behind this bizarre ad has, we think, been unravelled: it’s a sham, bathed in awful humour, and is in fact, a guerrilla marketing campaign for an upcoming movie called No Hard Feelings, due out in the summer of 2023, starring Jennifer Lawrence, or so the internet says via a few threads. And the email address? A clever yet sneaky way to build a mailing list.

A Facebook page called “‘Date’ Our Son” was created March 3, and the only post is from March 6, with the same viral as image as above. As of the time of publishing, there are 5,000 comments and 6,000 shares of the page’s copy of the ad. Interestingly, there are paid promotions boosting the Buick-for-date trade (thanks, Zuckerburg, for the new transparency stuff!) and it’s marked as an Advertising/Marketing type of page, so that’s the dead giveaway that it’s a campaign and not just some creepy New York couple with a weirdo kid.

For Driving.ca, this is Detective Kana signing off, and now returning my missed call from Optimus Prime. Case. Closed.