“Motivational” Posters

The 2009 Demotivator posters from Despair.com are out!

Years before LOLCat, Star Trek or other kinds of parodies of motivational posters, there were the Despair posters. Perfect for diverse groups of people and of course, disaffected college students. My new favorites:

And of course, some previous classics:

I must admit that I might not have seen the appeal of these before I had your typical gray-cubicle tech job at a telecommunications company. I remember the first time I got one of those motivational posters. It was a variation on “Teamwork” for my part in a marathon blitz (three 16 hour days) of semi-live web development. (This was before weblogs.) Gee, thanks.

I was only at that job for about ten months, but in that short time I came to understand the dark appeal of demotivators. Subsequent jobs in information technology only served to reinforce the feeling.

‘Course now I find the humorous (as opposed to the sarcastic) more appealing. I suppose that says something about how I like what I do now.