(again, DW, sorry for the repeat. gah come the fuck on... crosspost... this is like try number four now.. *annoyed*)
(possible trigger warning: I'm going to talk about the blog post and not the comic, but the comic seen by following the link may be triggering for suicide content, particularly a specific method I won't mention here. I certainly found the last panel more personally disturbing than funny, even granted it is black humor.)
From http://hijinksensue.com/2011/12/05/comfortably-numb/
When you see a commercial that starts with “Doing [insert extremely easy, every day task] is hard! Don’t you wish there was a better way?” DO NOT BUY THAT THING! No one wants it. No one needs it. Stop buying stuff for people just because you think you have to. Make something. Frame a photo of the best day you ever had with that person. Take them on an adventure. Knit a freakin’ scarf. Give them something that doesn’t have a direct monetary value and isn’t available at Best Buy. Otherwise you might as well just write how much cash you were intending to spend on a piece of paper, give it to the other person, take their slip of paper and work out the change owed.
Damn right. I have been trying to edge my family this way for a while. There's hardly anything any of us need anymore and hardly any place to put anything we merely want. I like the aesthetic appeal of gifts under a tree, but a couple per person is surely enough? I am not so great about this kind of restraint when it comes to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
enotsola to whom I sometimes wish to GIVE ALL THE THINGS, but when my mother asks what I want for Christmas or birthdays I always tell her there's really nothing anymore, and yet she comes up with things anyway. They're not "bullshit" gifts like mentioned in the post - she does actually know what kinds of things I like - but as I said, we're just plum out of room by now. The "bullshit" gifts have tended to come from enotsola's family. I'm glad I am not going there for Christmas anymore because I sometimes got some doozies from his step-dad's family who had seen me, what, twice in their lives? yet apparently still felt obligated to buy me things. His mother has been kind of hit or miss too. I would rather just get a card, honestly, than a t-shirt neither of us can wear or a tchotchke we wouldn't have chosen for ourselves. (The coasters with dragons and Jack Skellington on them have been very useful and appreciated, however.)
Also:
ALTERNATELY: What’s your favorite “As Seen On TV” product to hate? Mine is the “Make a giant cupcake” pan whose commercial starts out with “Regular cake is boring…” NO IT IS NOT. FUCK YOU. CAKE IS AWESOME.
(possible trigger warning: I'm going to talk about the blog post and not the comic, but the comic seen by following the link may be triggering for suicide content, particularly a specific method I won't mention here. I certainly found the last panel more personally disturbing than funny, even granted it is black humor.)
From http://hijinksensue.com/2011/12/05/comfortably-numb/
When you see a commercial that starts with “Doing [insert extremely easy, every day task] is hard! Don’t you wish there was a better way?” DO NOT BUY THAT THING! No one wants it. No one needs it. Stop buying stuff for people just because you think you have to. Make something. Frame a photo of the best day you ever had with that person. Take them on an adventure. Knit a freakin’ scarf. Give them something that doesn’t have a direct monetary value and isn’t available at Best Buy. Otherwise you might as well just write how much cash you were intending to spend on a piece of paper, give it to the other person, take their slip of paper and work out the change owed.
Damn right. I have been trying to edge my family this way for a while. There's hardly anything any of us need anymore and hardly any place to put anything we merely want. I like the aesthetic appeal of gifts under a tree, but a couple per person is surely enough? I am not so great about this kind of restraint when it comes to
enotsola to whom I sometimes wish to GIVE ALL THE THINGS, but when my mother asks what I want for Christmas or birthdays I always tell her there's really nothing anymore, and yet she comes up with things anyway. They're not "bullshit" gifts like mentioned in the post - she does actually know what kinds of things I like - but as I said, we're just plum out of room by now. The "bullshit" gifts have tended to come from enotsola's family. I'm glad I am not going there for Christmas anymore because I sometimes got some doozies from his step-dad's family who had seen me, what, twice in their lives? yet apparently still felt obligated to buy me things. His mother has been kind of hit or miss too. I would rather just get a card, honestly, than a t-shirt neither of us can wear or a tchotchke we wouldn't have chosen for ourselves. (The coasters with dragons and Jack Skellington on them have been very useful and appreciated, however.)Also:
ALTERNATELY: What’s your favorite “As Seen On TV” product to hate? Mine is the “Make a giant cupcake” pan whose commercial starts out with “Regular cake is boring…” NO IT IS NOT. FUCK YOU. CAKE IS AWESOME.
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Date: Dec. 7th, 2011 10:56 pm (UTC)From:I can very much agree with the blog post. Products that make things (like chatting) easier (like auto-correct) do so by complicating the lives of it's users and its victims. :)