"Another thing millennials ruined" Topic

Christmas Cards

Year over year, the number of Christmas Cards the Elmo's get is declining. The corporate ones are becoming the majority (thanks Chewy, at least you're thinking of me).

Granted, the people who used to send us cards are dying but Aunt Myrtle has kids! Where are the ungrateful nephews?

Maybe its not Millennials. As much as I love to tell my kids how their generation ruined everything, I have a card from SOMnBH, DOM, and three of their friends (the offspring are two years apart, so had a common core of friends).

I've never understood greeting cards since the advent of the telephone. I send one to my mom because they mean the world to her but otherwise? We can talk on the phone.

Conversations are ephemeral.

Email is constrained to a device, which while becoming more and more ubiquitous, the device must also be displaying specific data from within a limited number of applications. Doing things with the device mitigates the availability for other things.

Cards- Christmas or otherwise- are tactile, can be displayed with a wide variety of presentation and location, and only interfere with the display of other things in a similar modality.

Different media, different optimal use cases.

We send out Christmas cards every year & the return cards seem to get less each year. Much of our family & friends are scattered about the country so this works for us.
Paul 🎅🤶

The only consistent card senders are the those with family update letters. It's like long form social media once a year.

"Britney graduated from cosmetology school and has a job at some hairdresser. Jax just got out of rehab and we are glad he will spend Christmas with us. Husband mark started a remote job but is spending most of his time with his Etsy shop"

A big part of it is that physical mail is something millennials are not really conversant with. I served on the Board of my condo association and there are a number of things that we are legally required to deliver by mail. I became well versed in the plaintive wails of "I never look at my mail".

I

The worst part of the worldview enfant perdus describes is the belief in the stability and security of the electronic communication that has become so ubiquitous in modern society.

Since "millennials" have already saved Vinyl records, compact cassettes, polaroid-style instant cameras, cheap disposable fish eye lensed cameras and many other relics of the 20th century the solution is obvious.

Make using the post cool.

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