Big news today, everybody: Hallmark Cards is embarking on a massive, cost-slashing reorganization intended to right the ship as the retail market for greeting cards continues to disappear. Depending on whom you ask, the death spiral of such gilded stationery may be down to those business-murdering millennials (and Gen Z, too!), who, in the words of a Hallmark senior VP, “don’t even know, in some cases, how to address an envelope.”
Oh really? I’ve been mailing rent checks for more than a decade, lady. Sorry I don’t have $4.29 left to spend a piece of paper that says “Have a Blessed Baptism.”
Latest casualty of millennials: greeting cards. They "don't even know…how to address an envelope. They don't have a stamp, or necessarily know how to buy a stamp. They don't have addresses." https://t.co/HQqHwCBSEx pic.twitter.com/TWqgdv92Sn
— Alec MacGillis (@AlecMacGillis) January 30, 2020
It’s typical to blame these cultural tides on younger people, and their social media and smartphones — and to an extent we are responsible. At the same time, you have to admit, the companies feeling the generational crunch make a lot of god-awful trash unfit for human use, and Hallmark is very much not an exception. With all due respect to the employees, this brand and their WASP-y McMansion vibes can burn in hell. You have given us nothing but treacle and the same eight shades of lavender for my entire lifetime. You wanted us to send greeting cards for Halloween?! Get FUCKED.
hallmark cards are at it again pic.twitter.com/3nKuAbhWoR
— Peyton (@paaay_paaay) October 4, 2015
Did you ever consider that, apart from the advent of instant communication via text and email, your little pre-written missives are condescendingly dull and generic? That their presentation isn’t even pleasing to the eye? Your sympathy cards look like every single image result for “white girl dorm room.” I shudder to think how many trees we’ve pulped so that long-suffering secretaries could pick up Happy National Boss’ Day cards that will be lining the bottom of a waste basket later that afternoon. That’s not even a real holiday. Quit taking up space at the mall with your racks of hollow sentiment. Ridiculous.
I’m not buying hallmark cards because I don’t like their cards—I get mine from Etsy, museum gift shops, or have my sister design them!
— Ariadne Oliver Stan Account (@marillenbaum27) January 30, 2020
Honestly, the couple times a year when I do need a card — maybe for Christmas, or an important birthday — I stand there going through your selection for 10 or 15 minutes, finding absolutely nothing good. Even a basic, not-ugly, blank-on-the-inside card is asking too much, I suppose; instead it’s all sections labeled “Valentine’s Day: for a Grandson” and creepily photoshopped dogs talking about marriage. I don’t doubt you’ll be better off ending this cursed product line and focusing on gift bows, porcelain angel figurines or whatever other future-landfill stuff you sell. Just take the L, Hallmark, and let us free up space on the fridge for silly photos and art that doesn’t suck.
And if you really need a villain here — some cruel assassin who took you out with their total disregard for dumb convention — then fine, I will play that part. It was me. I killed Hallmark Cards. What’s more, I demand to be celebrated for it. Because I was right, my cause was just, and the world will be a better place without your imitations of sincerity.
Miles Klee
Miles Klee is MEL’s resident tank-top dirtbag, shitposter and meme expert. He’s also the author of the novel ‘Ivyland’ and a story collection, ‘True False.’
