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"Saying What You Want To (Men Buying Cards)"

This topic contains censored swear words, please don't edit it staffies.

I don't buy cards. The exceptions I make are only for stupidity, such as buying "Sorry your nan died" as a birthday card. I fought a moral battle over that, humour won, I bought the card and gave it. I gave another girl a "I hear it's a boy, congratulations!" for christmas. I get strange looks, a rumour even started spreading, but it's still great fun.

But I'm finally getting around to doing research about this, and something occured to me.

Do men not buy cards because they're just painful, pointlessly over the top and unfunny, or is it because they don't want to express themselves, even if it IS for humour?

Want some serious answers here, genuinely trying to figure it out. Would you be more inclined to buy a "You f**king ass" birthday-hate-card?

The way I figure it is, people wouldn't just buy "I hate you" cards for the hell of it, maybe as a kinda friendly bored quick laugh thing, but I think the direction for it would be to look at excuses for doing so: I.E. taking birthdays, instead of sending a "happy birthday hope you're well" sending a "I'm going to feed you your spleen" card - encouraging it as part of society, instead of the cheap quick laugh route.

Even if was a valentines card just saying "Yeah, you're ok I guess" instead of this smushy crap. If you love someone that much, you don't want to get down on one knee, sing a ballad and bring them roses - you want to f**k them. Club them on the head and bring them back to your cave. Isn't that what love is all about? Hell, if you don't have to club them, even better.

Now I'm sure men don't sit around never wanting to say -anything-, well I don't. It just seems like a massive problem of communication. We're offered easy routes to say things, but all these things never ever say what we -really- want to say. Even the best efforts are filtered down, watery and uncomfortable.

So actually, as a question, I'd like to ask what you'd like to tell people. What do you really want to say to the girl you've got a crush on? And seriously, not "um.. wanna go out..?", I want to know what you want to do to her.

What would you like to say to your parents, your wife, your workmates?

I've had a bit of an vision about all this, I've been surrounded by too many people who never say what they want to, talk behind people's backs. If you haven't got the entire set of balls to say something to someone's face, I think it'd be great to have another option, even if it's just a start. If it encourages people at all to start saying what the hell they want to, bring out confidence in people, then I'm all for it.

(I'd like to tell Grix to shut up lol)

Now that's a message for an ex-girlfriend.

:^P

Mumbai Duck wrote:
> "So long and thanks for all the fish"

tsk tsk

"So long and thanks for all the fish"

I usually buy cards by artists or whatever.

No message, just a nice landscape, or something equally non committed, then I say what I want to inside.

"I'd be lying if I said I was happy with you, but it turns out I'm gay, so it's actually not your fault at all and this shouldn't affect your self esteem in a negative way"

So is this an invitation for us to come up with suggestions?

I'm game, but nothing springs straight to mind yet...
(Black Glove's "missing you" one was genius...)

Blank wrote:
> Grix Thraves wrote:
> But I'm not here to make that judgement for you, I'm offering the
> opportunity. Nobody makes a knife wanting you to go stab someone in
> the head with it.
>
> I'm sure some of them do.

Ok, fair point.

(By the way, this was not entirely my idea, the people involved know who they were, but Goatboy for one had a part in it)

I really want to do this, but I'm not going to do it half-heartedly and have Hedfix/Hallmark orientated humour, want pure bluntness and irony. Forcing myself to focus, taking a course in Photoshop just to improve my art too.

And as much as I kinda find bitter emotions interesting, say when it comes to break ups, I think it's much better to analyse things logically without emotion. Past experience of a relationship is what people want, not gibbering through tears "I hate you you cow!" etc stuff which is what happens when everything is said through some pathetic defense mechanism.

I hate being human sometimes. I think that's why I love animals so much, when they're scared, they bite you, simple. Why can't we just do that?

But we'll see.

Ok, example:

Let's pick two opposite emotions, happy, unhappy.

There's a card you can send your ex, you can choose between them to say either:

"I'm so unhappy we broke up." or

"I'm so happy we broke up."

Now the first is the Hallmark way. That's the option already there, a gutless apology. It'll probably be followed by a paragraph pleading to take her/him back.

Yeah, I've done it, regret it. I blame it on being an emotional wreck at the time, but I have no excuses and it will be mentioned to me at the pearly gates. I'm sorry, I really am. But the same has happened to me, so both sides of it. Experience matters, and it was good while it lasted.

Now you'd expect the second to be my way? Right? Wrong. In fact, you could argue that's still the Hallmark way.

"I'm so happy we broke up." is brimming with bitchiness and emotion. Just that, one, line. I bet you cards like this exist already somewhere.

Come on, what would you think if someone sent this to you? Apart from looking skywards and laughing, it's just an absolute pathetic attempt at the "I don't need no wo/man anyway!" routine that seems to be so popular.

It's lousy, it's difficult to believe the statement is even true (and in fact, will probably prepare you somewhat for next week when the pleading starts) and it's degrading to the relationship you had.

And why? Because it's emotional. It contains one massive, massive bit of emotion:

It says how YOU are feeling. It is telling them that this has affected you.

Weakness!

You really want to show your ex you're weak? Rubbish, nobody ever does (Unless they're some emotional wreck, hey Grix? Hey?)

Shut up.

I think the idea is to destroy all defenses. Saying you're happy, is a defense. Threatening them, words on paper, is defense. And besides, would probably get me a few court cases if I sold anonymous cards saying "I want to kill you"

Although I'm considering it. One of the ideas for your parents anniversary says "I had a good long think about things and decided Freud was wrong.. -opens- I want to kill you both." or something like that

So I'm trying to take it down to raw basics. Basic urges and needs, deep down stuff. Men want to impregnate [not that they actually have a deep down desire to raise kids], and women want to be impregnated. Usually. Well, if there's a problem there it's usually something more on the surface.

But I just like mixing psychology and creativity together really. I think humour is the most complicated and serious thing there is, and it's great fun too.

But the last thing I want is to make all these pathetic 'defense' cards. If you want to pull each others hair, do it in the playground.

Grix Thraves wrote:
> But I'm not here to make that judgement for you, I'm offering the
> opportunity. Nobody makes a knife wanting you to go stab someone in
> the head with it.

I'm sure some of them do.