Picture this: A happy family playing together in the backyard, smiling and laughing in slow motion while a soothing voice goes on and on about enjoying life. You feel moved and inspired somehow, but you’re not sure why.
Then you’re suddenly bombarded with a litany of terrible things that could happen before the soothing voice returns. “Ask your doctor if Gonofixia is right for you,” it says. You have no idea what condition “Gonifixia” is even meant to treat and but it sounds like taking it might be worse than whatever it is.
Welcome to the modern American pharmaceutical drug commercial, which the incomparable Elle Cordova has hilariously parodied on TikTok.
Cordova has gained a huge loyal following with her brilliant poems and videos personifying everything from planets to inventions to fonts on social media. Her “RX Side Effects Redux” video takes on pharmaceutical ad side effect disclaimers with a list of potential reactions that have people cracking up.
Cordova started off with a funny rhyming list of potential prescription drug side effects, which includes traditional reactions such as “sneezing, wheezing, labored breathing, trouble speaking, sleeping, eating, hemorrhages, internal bleeding…” and non-traditional ones such as “masochism, vampirism, sudden necromanticism, phantom limbs, fanaticism.”
Then someone challenged her to put a beat to it and with the help of a bass-playing friend, she did. Behold the result:
@elle.cordova Replying to @the_lonelyest_pickle dare accepted. RX Side Effects Redux! (Deja vu now also makes a recurring appearance per commenter requests) #rx
People are loving it and even requesting she make it into a real song:
“if you made this an official song I would listen to this religiously ðŸ˜ðŸ˜,” wrote one person.
“The second ‘chronic deja vu’ i almost screamed, this is art ðŸ˜,” wrote another.
“I would actually listen to this ironically,” added another.
“So there’s a small chance i can become a vampire or a necromancer 🤔,” joked another.
This is the kind of thing that makes social media tolerable—smart people entertaining us with clever commentary on contemporary reality. And Ella Cordova is a master at it.
If you enjoyed Cordova’s video, you can drop her a tip here or join her Patreon here, and follow her for more on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram.