At first, like most people, I didn't mind it. It was a nice callback to the stiff upper lipped Britain of yesteryear, made newly relevant by these tough economic times. However, it has now become an embodiment of everything I hate. Well, apart from things like racism and sexism. There's not much of that going on.
So, a bit of backstory for those of you who can't be arsed to check Wikipedia. Basically, the above poster was a piece of wartime propaganda issued by the British government at the start of WWII in 1939. For a long time it was forgotten about (the poster, not the war) and then rediscovered in 2000 by some shop owners, who, enterprising bastards that they are, decided to print copies of the image. They could do this because Crown Copyright expires after 50 years. However, additional enterprising bastards got wind of all this and as such it's now fucking everywhere. There have been endless parodies and frankly I'm sick to the back teeth of it all. Apparently, this has been going on since 2009, but I think it's only reached its nadir recently.
I must admit, I liked this one when I first saw it:
However, that was before I was aware of the deluge of liquid, unimaginative shite that would follow. It's even on ham now. I was in Tesco and saw some "Keep Calm and Do Well" ham. Fucking ham! You know something's gone too far when it's appearing on cured, reformed pork products with added water.
My as-yet unthrottled sister has this on her wall:
It's not even anything to do with the original motif! For fuck's sake. I hate all the twee ones too. "Keep Calm and Drink Tea", "Keep Calm and Have a Sausage Roll", "Keep Calm and Stroke Kittens" and the like. Christ, nothing makes my lunch rise and my fists clench faster.
So, why do I hate these so much? How long have you got? Not only does it typify the crass commercialism of today's society and the desperate struggle to ape Internet culture (this is nothing but a meme that has somehow escaped into the real world), but I also think that more people should be paying attention to what the original says.
Call me General Sweeping because I'm going to make a sweeping generalisation, but the public are too fucking emotional these days. Everything's way too dramatic. The news focuses more on the emotional rather than the factual and even glorified talent contests like The X Factor seem to be determined on who has the saddest sob story and not who can sing the best. It's mental. The stiff upper lip we wrongly still pride ourselves upon has been replaced by the quivering bottom lip. Now, I'm not going to start talking about how Britain used to be great, at the risk of sounding like this pathetic scumsack. I do think that people should realise that whilst times are tough for a lot of people and even the daily grind feels like an uphill swim through treacle, people have lived through a hell of a lot worse.
Hopefully, this'll all die down soon. Thankfully, it does seem like they're running out of ideas. So, the next time you pick up a "Keep Calm and Have a Birthday" card or a "Keep Calm and Cum" novelty dildo, think - "Do I really want to perpetuate this?" and then carry on ignoring it.
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