Because I STILL care more for Humour than our Love

Updated Feb’ 2015, because our love is as eternal as the need to cash in on it!

I’m still just as frustrated with misplaced social comments regarding the Asda Smart Price Valentines card. Comedians and pundits mock the supermarket retailer like they think it’s a genuine discount product that designers have specifically devised and targeted for a cash-strapped market.

It isn’t.

Hipster assholes seem to think it’s a delicious social comment on consumerism and frugal living, something made all the more kitsch/chic/hashtag/jokes by the ongoing recession.

It isn’t, and I’m pretty sure that when its dragged on this long, you don’t have a recession, just a shit economy.

No-one is getting this for their loved one because they’re strapped for cash, they’re getting it because they think it’s oh so fucking witty, because they see it as a post-modern dig at consumerism, despite it being just the opposite.

It’s an absolute triumph of form over content. It’s a reaffirmation of our consumption rituals- eat turkey on this holiday, buy cards and teddies on this holiday, eat as many pancakes as possible soon after- to the extent that buying a representation of something pointless is just as valid if not better than that pointless something itself.

Buying into the rejection of a commercial institution is no different than the act of buying into that institution itself. Sales of cards covered in hearts and flowers look exactly the same to an end of quarter spreadsheet as cards that take the piss.

Those who buy it aren’t tight-fisted or lacking in romance, and they won’t be sleeping on the sofa for their lack of effort or praised for a frugal nature.

They’re buying the idea of buying, and there’s nothing special or clever about that.

Happy Valentines Everybody!

Nick

xx

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