J. Courtney Sullivan in the New York Times:
A few weeks ago, Laura Bonner received an e-mail alert at her office computer: A friend she hadn’t heard from in ages had sent her an electronic greeting from a Web site called Someecards.com. “I think I actually groaned,” said Ms. Bonner, 26, a subsidiary rights manager for Farrar, Straus & Giroux. “I mean, really, an e-card?”
Ms. Bonner ignored the message for as long as she could. Finally, at day’s end, she clicked on the link, expecting to find a typically treacly online greeting, the kind that assaults the eyes and ears with bright colors and cloying music. Instead she saw a simple sketch of a smiling elderly man in a bowling shirt, with a caption that read: “I’m glad we stay mildly interested in each other’s lives.”
“I laughed out loud,” she recalled. “I was instantly obsessed with the site.”
Though electronic greetings were once supposed to make traditional cards passé, today many e-cards are just as cringe-inducing as their tangible store-bought counterparts. But in the last year, a new wave of e-card sites have emerged, seeking a hipper audience with sarcastic, edgy and proudly vulgar messages.
More here.