personally unpersonalized

Society today is nuts about technology; obsessed could be used, but they may be a bit of a stretch. Either way.... technology is used to make things easier and that sounds like a great thing, but the thing that makes technology embark on a downward journey to you-know-where, is that technology makes human-to-human interaction harder to come by. People can now get told off on AIM, blackmailed on Facebook, dumped through text messaging, and told terrible news over an answering machine. On the other hand, the same applies to communicating all the good things. Technology is the buffer that allows you to have courage or to completely take all the excitement or emotion out of everything.

There are big things being streamed through our skulls through marketing, but the items that amaze me are the little ones. Take something that has been a part of our culture since... FOREVER! - buying gifts for people. Since the beginning of time, gifts have become the solution to resolving a fight, congratulating someone, or just simply making someone's shitty, gloomy day a tad bit better. The key to making someone appreciate a gift given is getting them something they like. Don't get a toddler and candle and don't get your mom a picture book. Personalize your gift for that special someone (or maybe just that person you're forced to get a gift for).

And that's where gift cards come in.... how can you get a present for your uncle's cousin's daughter, if you don't know anything about them? Just buy a gift card. Gift cards give an allowance to that "special" someone to allow them to use it anywhere. How darling! And I'm pretty convinced people these days are brainwashed by the magical power of that handheld rectangle. Why do I think this...? Well I know from my own personal experience that it really is just the easy way out (comparison to all technology). When I was a little girl, around Christmas time, I would spend hours upon hours sitting at my kitchen table with my cousins sifting from one catalogue to the next in order to compile the perfect list, stuffed with every single present I remotely wanted, to give to Santa. There's no time for that now. Now I just tell my family I want money - money to get whatever I want because I am not really sure of exactly what I want. Now my family knows nothing about what I like. When they actually do attempt to get me an actual tangible gift, I want to vomit all over it (it really is that bad). That one situation right there makes me want to stick with my annual tradition of just opening cards from my family on Christmas; it's just the safest way to get what I want guaranteed.