Inspired Photoshopping from the Facebook group.

Everyone can calm down now. The General Manager of Medownick Laser Clinic, known only as ‘George’, has informed The Enthusiast that the laser eye surgery clinic’s “Dancing Eyes Lady” TVC shall no longer disgrace our television screens.

For those who have not seen the reviled advert, you may have missed out! As of late this afternoon, YouTube has also pulled the video “due to a copyright claim by Medownick Laser Clinic”. There’s a version hosted on Facebook, for those with an account, but it shall surely be yanked from there shortly.

I personally found the advert infuriating. And I wanted to examine why. In the process I discovered an astonishing level of vitriol directed at it. The internet hates Medownick’s “Dancing Eyes Lady” with the sort of poisonous loathing usually stored up in the human bile duct only to be released upon sight of child molesters or emos.

Facebook, common catalogue of human foibles, has many groups dedicated to mutually reviling the TVC. The most populous hate group, Haters Of Medownick ‘eye dancing lady’ ad, currently has over 60,000 members. The largest love group, “Love the medownick eye dancing ad : )“, has a mere 113 members. The most creative hate group, “fuck off medownick ad!!! before i eye gouge you with Rhinoceros horns“, has 45.

Like the YouTube comment – “whoever came up with the idea to make this add is a complete asshole with serious issues” – the Haters group features some startling invective. The actress herself has been called a whore, a bitch, fucking ugly, filthy, despicable, and “Horse Face McNugget”. She has been threatened with shooting, stabbing, eye-gouging, punching, rape and Cleveland steamer-ing. And she wasn’t even the creative.

This isn’t merely a Facebook phenom. On WikiAnswers and twice on Yahoo Answers the Medownick “Dancing Eyes Lady” ad has been dubbed worst ad ever. The internet hate machine has fired up on forums as diverse as Habbo, BigFooty, AustralianGamer and Vogue. Let’s not even get started on Twitter or the blogs…

It’s difficult to pluck specific criticisms from the torrent of violent revenge fantasies peppered throughout the internet. So what inspires this hot, vomitous disgust? Permit me to begin theorising.

Exactly two-thirds of the 30-second spot is dedicated to a repetitive image and soundtrack, which is enough to grate on the modern viewer conditioned to the rapid-fire imagery of most advertisements.

Prolonged eye contact is routinely connected to sexual interest or confrontation. This may explain the unbridled fury of many posts, as these viewers feel they are being threatened. This also may explain the occasional posts claiming that the woman featured in the advertisement is a MILF with whom the poster would like to engage in sexual congress.

Finally, anyone who has experimented with “dancing” with their eyes will know that it hurts. The muscles that stabilise the eye work predominantly for fine tuning. When we want to look up, down and to the sides, we move our head more than our eyeballs. Hence, this kind of eyeball “dancing” becomes quite painful in a short period of time. While watching someone else do it, we empathise with her pain, associating that uncomfortable muscular soreness with the advert.

Regardless, it’s finally over. ‘George’ told The Enthusiast via email, “The advertising campaign you refer to has finished. We had a very good response from the target audience the ad was directed to, the 55+ age group.”

As for the hate campaign? “We found the response on Facebook interesting,” he writes. “We accept that everybody is entitled to their opinions.”

Thank you, internet. Thank you, Medownick. Now, let’s hope we can put all this unpleasantness behind us.