Giant Poppy Watch

[Dog-amoto]

Followed this account on Twitter for the past couple of years. 

https://twitter.com/giantpoppywatch?s=21

Some absolute belters on here. Poppy pizzas, poppies on trainers, vans, cooling towers, poppy Christmas trees. I saw poppy drinks flasks in Sainsbury’s earlier today  

In the past 5 years or so, the whole poppy thing has turned from a poignant and dignified symbol of remembrance to a bit of a commercialised farce and hardly anyone challenges it for fear of being labelled disrespectful. I actually think the recent culture of overblowing everything is hugely disrespectful - I saw an advert for a whiskey with “undertones of smoke and earthiness as a nod to the battlefields” Disgusting.  

Having Cookie Monster wear a poppy on live TV, politicians wearing laughably sized ones on their lapel, people being triggered by the fact someone isn’t wearing a poppy. It’s become a bit of a contest over who can remember the hardest and I’m quite sick of it to be honest. 

[bob]

The David Squires football comic in the Guardian always summed up the Poppy fury season to me.

It's a running theme, so Google it for some crackers, but here's a great one:

[Cube]

If the government cared about soldiers, they wouldn't be sending them to horrendous, war-torn and collapsed locations like Pontins.

[sumo73]

The primary goal of a business (apart from not for profit) is to make money and of course make profit. That is the goal pure and simple. Anything that can be capitalised upon can and will in today's world. Just look at 'some' of the mess in video games with loot boxes and road maps to video games. This isn't every game but still it's worrying.

Do you want to buy hot cross buns all year around? Do you want to buy Christmas stuff in August? Do you want to buy Easter eggs on 2nd January? Do you want to buy a poppy pizza? Apparently if they sell, customers want them.

Back in 1997 was the first sign for me that things were changing with the old poppy. As time moves on you have to try and get younger generations involved so I knew what people were trying to do back then. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/18054.stm)

As for all the mess on TV with people wearing or not wearing a poppy how does that translate on the street with people wearing them. If anything I've seen people wear them less over the years. And there seems to be a small but growing group of people who are vocal about people wearing them as if they support nationalism, racism or colonialism.

If you want to buy Easter eggs at the start of January. if you want to buy FIFA 21 on the Switch, if you want to buy a poppy pizza then it's your choice or not. 

Maybe the least we could do is reflect on the 11th November, what people did in the past to protect the freedoms we enjoy today. That costs nothing.

Edited November 9, 2020 by sumo73

[Rummy]

I feel like each year it seems more and more people forget the true severities of war and slowly warp it into something more palatable - poppies are basically claps for the NHS - making oneself feel and look good and belonging to the tribe whilst giving and more so wishing to do actual fuck all about the issues or problems*.

 

*not all poppywearers - but the brigade of people who take heavy stances on it. I used to love the poppy(poppy appeal rolling thru school - telling you how your 5p is supporting great british heroes and you then get to wear your tribal badge of having supported them) but the absolute sycophantic nature of relentless insistence of being Of The Poppy each year is almost such a curiously ironic inversion of the tribalistic tendancies that tend to create wars - when we were all arguably fighting for freedoms. I don't regularly poppy up any more as a result, tbh.