Life, 1922-01-12 · page 2 of 34
Life — January 12, 1922 — page 2: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a **subscription advertisement** for *LIFE* magazine using dark humor. The centerpiece is a grotesque inverted face—distorted and unhappy—illustrating the ad's headline "The World Is Upside Down." The satire claims that subscribing to *LIFE* magazine caused this person's misfortune. The text jokes that before becoming a regular subscriber, he was normal; after reading *LIFE*, his world literally inverted. The implication is that *LIFE*'s satirical content about current events was so shocking or absurd it drove readers to despair. This reflects early 20th-century humor: magazines mocked social upheaval through exaggeration. The ad uses self-deprecating satire to market the publication—essentially claiming *LIFE*'s hard truths about society are transformatively disturbing, positioning the magazine as unflinchingly honest commentary.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
shed Weekly by Life Publishing Entered as Second Class Matter June 3, 1883 at the Post Office at New Yor . nsON on Ae ‘New York, N'Y, ‘N.Y, under the act ‘of March 3d, 1 sad ey EaOR bay tir ription, Dollars. Entered as Second Giass Matter at the Post Office ment, Crnada, DTASSY, See, 5, danuary 12, 1922, Copyright in England and the British Possessions. m Manager’ || ira ais. | The World Is Upside Down ND all because the readers of LIFE are restricted to a few millions. For ex- ample, look at the unpleasant gentleman’s picture above. Isn’t he having a hard time of it? That was before he became a regular subscriber to LIFE, when he wasn’t back to normalcy. Turn him upside down and you will see what happened to him when he began to read LIFE. ax AWA WOR or oN fawk A \ \ \ Special \ Offer \ Enclosed find One Dollar (Canadian X eign $1.40). for ten o, so nt, eee eee ae 212 aN Open only to new subscribers; no subscripticns reneweé at this N\ LIFE, 598 Madison Avenue, New York \ One Year, $5.00. (Canadian, $5.80; Foreign, $6.60.) NS Printen in tur U.S. comicbooks.com