Friday, May 11, 2012

Keep Calm and Something Ironic

I was going to write a rant about how I'm sick of the "Keep Calm and Carry On" posters and their various spoofs.  After all, the whole phenomena has really run its course.  Beyond the original, there's really only three more permutations you can try: satire ("Get Panicky and Go Mental,") weirdness ("Keep Calm and Have a Donut,") and gratuitous subculture references ("Keep Calm and Han Shot First.")  Now people are scrounging for variations and the results usually aren't funny or meaningful.  Often, they can't even be bothered to get the font right (Humanist, people!  It's the only font they have in Britain.)

But then I realised that there is another avenue that hasn't been explored: other countries.  The reason the poster was so amusing in the first place was because it was so distinctly British.  It's rare that you see an artefact that sums up a culture's qualities (well, best qualities) so perfectly.  So I thought, what would the equivalent posters in other countries be?

Greece:


 China:


Canada:

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