MOTIVATION. Psychology tells us that motivation- true, lasting motivation- can only come from within. Common sense tells us it can’t be manufactured or productized. So how is it that a multi-billion dollar industry thrives through the sale of motivational commodities and services? Because, in our world of instant gratification, people desperately want to believe that there are simple solutions to complex problems. And when desperation has disposable income, market opportunities abound.
AT DESPAIR, INC., we believe motivational products create unreleastic expectations, raising hopes only to dash them. That’s why we created our soul-crushingly depressing Demotivators® designs, so you can skip the delusions that motivational products induce and head straight for the disappointments that follow!
The illustrations are beautiful. Here are a few of the messages:
“That which does not kill me postpones the inevitable.”
“There are no stupid questions, but there are a LOT of inquisitive idiots.”
“The only consistent feature in all of your dissatisfying relationships is you.”
“Sometimes the best solution to morale problems is just to fire all of the unhappy people.”
“No single raindrop believes it is responsible for the flood.”
“It takes 43 muscles to frown and 17 to smile, but it doesn’t take any to just sit there with a dumb look on your face.”
Darwin, my boss loves these - one of them always seems to “sneak” into any powerpoint presentation he makes!!! Always takes the stuffy higher-ups a few seconds to realize just WHAT they are looking at…
When you wish upon a falling star, your dreams can come true. Unless it’s really a meteorite hurtling to the Earth which will destroy all life. Then you’re pretty much hosed no matter what you wish for. Unless it’s death by meteor.
For years, I’ve had a Demotivation poster featuring a midair circle
of skydivers, and the caption: “Never underestimate the power of
stupid people in large groups.” It was surprisingly apropos for my
employer at the time.
Thanks for the tip to this great site.
I just bought this one for my daughter/engineer
And, when you buy something the last recipt page is as good as any of the pictures.
Once upon a time there were two chipmunks, a male and a female. The male chipmunk thought that arranging nuts in artistic patters was more fun that just piling them up to see how many you could pile up. The female was all for piling up as many as you could. She told her husband that if he gave up making designs with the nuts there would be room in their large cave for a great many more and he would soon become the wealthiest chipmunk in the woods. But he would not let her interfere with his designs, so she flew into a rage and left him.. “The shrike will get you,” she said, “because you are helpless and cannot look after yourself.” To be sure, the female chipmunk had not been gone three nights before the male had to dress for a banquet and could not find his studs or shirt or suspenders. So he couldn’t go to the banquet, but that was just as well, because all the chipmunks who did go were attacked and killed by a weasel.
The next day the shrike began hanging around outside the chipmunk’s cave, waiting to catch him. The shrike couldn’t get in because the doorway was clogged up with soiled laundry and dirty dishes. “He will come out for a walk after breakfast and I will get him then,” thought the shrike. But the chipmunk slept all day and did not get up and have breakfast until after dark. Then he came out for a breath of fresh air before beginning work on a new design. The shrike swooped down to snatch the chipmunk, but could not see very well on account of the dark, so he batted his head against an alder branch and was killed.
A few days later the female chipmunk returned and saw the awful mess the house was in. She went to the bed and shook her husband. “What would you do without me?” she demanded. “Just go on living, I guess,” he said. “You wouldn’t last five days,” she told him. She swept the house and did the dishes and sent out the laundry, and then she made the chipmunk get up and wash and dress. “You can’t be healthy in you lie in bed all day and never get any exercise,” she told him. So she took him for a walk in the bright sunlight and they were both caught and killed by the shrike’s brother, a shrike named Stoop.
Moral: Early to rise and early to bed makes a man healthy and wealthy and dead.
I was thrilled to find a 60-year-old copy of the Thurber Carnival (containing Fables for Our Time) at a book sale two months ago. My favorite is, of course, “The Scotty who Knew Too Much”… but this one’s more on topic:
The Moth and the Star
A young and impressionable moth once set his heart on a certain star. He told his mother about this and she counseled him to set his heart on a bridge lamp instead. “Stars aren’t the thing to hang around,” she said; “lamps are the thing to hang around.” “You get somewhere that way,” said the moth’s father. “You don’t get anywhere chasing stars.” But the moth would not heed the words of either parent. Every evening at dusk when the star came out he would start flying toward it and every morning at dawn he would crawl back home, worn out with his vain endeavor. One day his father said to him, “You haven’t burned a wing in months, boy, and it looks to me as if you are never going to. All your brothers have been badly burned flying around street lamps and all your sisters have been terribly singed flying around house lamps. Come on, now, get yourself scorched! A big strapping moth like you without a mark on him!”
The moth left his father’s house, but he would not fly around street lamps and he would not fly around house lamps. He went right on trying to reach the star, which was four and one-third light years, or twenty-five trillion miles, away. The moth thought it was just caught in the top branches of an elm. He never did reach the star, but he went right on trying, night after night, and when he was a very, very old moth he began to think that he really had reached the star and he went around saying so. This gave him a deep and lasting pleasure, and he lived to a great old age. He parents and his brothers and his sisters had all been burned to death when they where quite young.
Moral: Who flies afar from the sphere of our sorrow is here today and here tomorrow.
