Hallmark Hookers
I wish I could take credit for the phrase that is the title of this blog. In fact, it’s lifted directly from an episode of Senfeld:
Seinfeld, 6×03: The Pledge Drive
“There’s something very insincere about these greeting cards we send back and forth to each other all the time. They’re like these little one-dollar folded paper emotional prostitutes, isn’t it? “I don’t know what my feelings are, so I’ll just pay some total stranger a buck to make up this little Hallmark hooker to do the job for me. So I can go, ‘Yeah, I didn’t write this, but whatever they wrote, I think the same thing.'”
Today is Father’s Day and, while I don’t have a particular issue with the concept of having a special day for members of your family, I really hate the way we are expected, if not forced to go out and pay £5 (if we’re lucky) for these horrible little greetings cards on what seems to be an increasing number of times per year.
Back in the good old days, you only bought these cards for Christmas and Birthdays. Occasionally an anniversary, but only if you were passing the shelf in the store where the small selection of cards were available and were conscious enough to remember the day was near. But now, these “Hallmark Hookers” are available for every imaginable day, event and non-event of the calender.
Are we, as a race, so incapable of expressing true feelings and good wishes to each other that we need to have some randomly generated verse of generic shite written for us and printed onto a piece of card with a picture damn bunny rabbit?
I had the misfortune of having to visit a store this weekend that is dedicated 100% to selling these things and it really hit me that they are completely unnecessary – yet we are told that we MUST buy them. It’s the DONE thing. And who makes up these rules? Why, it’s the very people that are trying to squeeze more cash out of you in these horrible little stores. The very people that seem to have a gift for coming up with new sickly and contrived reasons for buying more and more of them every year.
I saw cards for people to buy their fucking PETS at the store yesterday. What The Fuck? And the amazing thing is that there are actually people gullible enough to buy them!
Also, exactly how is it believed to be a good idea to buy a greeting card to tell someone you’re sorry their relation is dead? How is that ANYTHING but SICK? But, it’s “the done thing” and people simply don’t question it!
“Sorry your wife is dead. Here’s a picture of a flower and a bible verse. Feel better!
Why not put it up on the wall or on the shelf above your TV as a grim reminder that someone you loved has snuffed it!”
It couldn’t be more thoughtless or insincere if it tried.
And it’s not just family events you have to put up with any more – it seems not a week goes by that someone else in the office is having a birthday, a baby, a wedding, a “last session with my shrink” day or some such bollocks … and every time we have to put our name to one of these paper prostitues in an effort to not seem like a miserable twat.
Well, no more!
You can take my £5 and put it toward a gift, even if that gift ends up being a stupid little teddy bear – I don’t care. At least a LITTLE thought will go into that. But sign your card? Put my seal of approval on the disgustingly shameless industry that is the Greeting Card? Hell No.
It’s time to take a stand!
Not one more Cardboard Whore will get my money. I’d rather be thought of as miserable than pump even one more penny into this pathetic excuse for an industry.
MisterShouty 