meish dot org: life, unfolding

This is a selection of frequently asked questions (and frequently answered answers) about the infamous meish dot org : be my anti valentine site, which has been doing the rounds of the internet for several years.

What’s all this about, then?
The idea of the site is to provide an alternative card-sending service for all the people who think Valentine’s Day is sickly-sweet, exclusively coupley, consumerist nonsense or otherwise a bit naff.

Who’s behind this site? How long has this been going? How did you come up with the idea?
The original VD cards were created by me (Meg Pickard) and David Pannett when we were both single and grumpy while sharing a flat in London and working in new media. We created a bunch of cynical cards poking fun at the cutesy commercialism of the day, to send to our friends, with slogans like “Destined to die alone and unloved in a room heavy with the tang of cat wee” and “Oh my god. Thirty and still single.” They were just downloads, really, but we had fun making them.

The next year, we did it again, only this time we added an automatic send function - a free thing, supported by ads. Not great, but about the limits of our technical knowledge at the time. We were surprised how popular they were - a couple of thousand sent!

In 2003, we redesigned and ran the site again, this time with an ad-free back end. Over a two week period, more than 30,000 cards were sent. In 2004 the total grew again, to nearly 100K. In 2005, the number of cards sent soared past the 200K mark before the server collapsed under the strain. And so the pattern continued: lots of traffic, lots of technology fail.

Every year saw a substantial revamp of both cards and back-end functionality in an effort to keep on top of demand.

In 2009, I decided that sending things by email was
a) too much hassle (in terms of being exploited by spambots and the like, plus causing my lovely hosts at Pair to have palpitations once a year) and
b) like, sooooo 2005. Who uses email anymore for sending stuff around the internet? Quite.

So it was reborn in early February 2009 with a social webtools spin, so people can share the love (and spread VD) via facebook, twitter, digg or anything else.

The VD cards live on my personal site and are created and curated by me.

Do you REALLY hate love?
No, you’re missing the point. I’m not anti-love or anti-romance or anti-relationships.

I’m against hollow gestures prescribed by people who are out to make money out of the holiday.

I’m against constant reminders that COUPLE=NORMAL and that anyone who isn’t in a relationship (or doesn’t want to be) is WEIRD and anyone who IS in a relationship but isn’t married is a FREAK and anyone who is married but hasn’t spawned is just plain STRANGE.

I’m against anyone with a vested interest telling us how and when it’s appropriate to be affectionate - say it with roses, a diamond is forever, if you REALLY loved her, you’d take her to Paris.

I hate all those cutesy bears holding satin hearts saying “I wuv oo snugglebum!” - as if love can only be this childish, price-tagged, pukey thing. I hate the fact that flowers which are reasonably priced at any other time of the year suddenly rocket in price in February, only to plummet again afterwards. It’s like the coporations are saying “yeah, we’re clearly ripping you off, but you have no choice but to accept it.” And I hate the cards with saccharine, pre-written messages and poems. If you love someone as an individual, why would you give them a generic message of love - “I love you in exactly the way that the card company says I should”?

There’s nothing less romantic and/or sexy than a bunch of wilted, overpriced flowers, slutty lingerie made in a sweatshop, chocolates melted down from left-over advent calendars and reformed into hearts and a card pre-printed with someone else’s generic sentiment which you’re supposed to sign away to your sweetheart.

One of the things I hate the most, though, is the pressure to be coupled off at that particular time of year - or, in fact, at all. Some societies have a big problem with the individual. Most people see it as a binary state - rather like the weather in England through the winter: it’s either raining, or it’s about to rain. Well, being single is a lot more than just “waiting for a relationship” or “suspicious because you’ve chosen to be single” and people shouldn’t be made to feel bad just because their not bumping nasties with someone - anyone. You don’t have to be in a relationship to be a valuable member of society - but they sure as hell make more money off you when you are…

What’s with the donation requests? I thought you were anti-commercialism!
The VD cards get a lot of traffic over the few short weeks they’re around each year. I’m chuffed to bits that people like the cards, but at the same time I inevitably need to pay for the extra bandwidth all those visits generate - this is, as I said before, only a personal site. I’m definitely not making any money out of this, but if you want to throw a small donation into the bucket, I promise it’ll be used to pay my hosting bill.

If anyone wants to talk sponsorship, get in touch. Needless to say, greeting card companies and florists need not apply.

What will you be doing on VD?
In orevious years, I have sat at home, watching the server nervously and hoping it doesn’t fall over. In 2009, I’ll be on a business trip in Australia. Oh, and taking photos of red things for my annual redspotting photo challenge. That’s about it.

How can I contact you?
You can use the contact link at the top of the blog or write to antivd at gmail dot com.

Do you do interviews about the Anti-VD site?
Yes. Just get in touch and we can talk - I’m happy to answer questions by email or over the phone.

Are these cards available in the shops? Why not?
Well, I don’t know: you tell me. If anyone’s interested in doing something printy with them next year, get in touch. Yes! You can buy prints of some of the cards at MOO.com

Wait, you’re selling greetings cards? Isn’t that kind of hypocritical?
Maybe, but people seem to want to buy them, even though they have an anti-card message on them. Isn’t that kind of hypocritical?

*shrug*

What technology is behind the card-sending application?
In previous years, the card engine ran on a free application which was heavily customised and sadly overloaded the server and b0rked out every single year because it wasn’t engineered for the sort of usage we got. Oops. The last couple of years have seen us trying something else out, devised and implemented by Meg’s husband, Paul. In 2009, the social sharing/bookmarking functionality is enabled by simple tools from addthis.com

Hang on, back up a second there: you’re married? Isn’t that kind of hypocritical?
Not at all. I’m married now, but I was single when the site first launched. But loathing VD isn’t about being single. I know plenty of people - married, single, coupled, gay, straight and otherwise - who are sick of the prescriptiveness of the day: being told how to celebrate, and being made to feel cheap/a failure/bad if they don’t do the chocolate/flowers/dinner routine, on exactly the right day.

What’s better - a partner who is a thoughtless pig all year round but manages to sort out hearts and flowers on the fourteenth of February every year, like clockwork, because the media reminds them, or someone who does nothing spectacular and flashy in the middle of February but sends flowers on a random Wednesday morning, because they were thinking about you, writes little personal messages on post-it notes and hides them in the book you’re reading on the commute to work, and uses their own words, which may not rhyme, but mean more than any stuffed bear could ever manage?

Thankfully, we don’t need a particular date to do nice things like go out for food or have flowers. Every day is a good day to tell someone you love them, no?

Which is your personal favorite of the bunch?
My favourite card is the one that says “I love you blah blah blah hearts & flowers yadda yadda yadda cupid etc.” because that’s exactly what I see whenever I see those store-bought cards with flowery messages on - “to someone special!”

The most frequently sent card is “Fat. Naked. Dangerous.” I think that tells us everything we need to know about web users these days.