I just launched a cruel & unusual collection of St. Patrick’s Day-themed meme shirts on my new E-commerce store, so I had a chatbot interview me as if I were someone important about it. If you want to see how the Irish sausage is made, read on.
What inspired these St. Patrick’s Day designs?
I wasn’t thinking of St. Patrick’s Day at all when I first came up with the idea. I just randomly had the thought of eating leprechaun meat one day & wondered what PETA ads trying to stop people from eating it would say. I also came to realize that the St. Patrick’s Day holiday was coming up, so it would be a good opportunity to try to do some holiday-themed designs on my new store. In the end, I dropped using the word “leprechauns” in favour of just “the Irish” since I asked around here in Japan & found there’s not a lot of people who have ever even heard of leprechauns. There’s no actual animosity toward the Irish or Irish diaspora that went into these designs, they simply have more global recognition than their gold-loving cryptids.
The themes of humour & dark satire stand out in your shirts. How did you decide on this approach?
I just have a lot of familiarity with dark humour, having been Necrolicious for nearly a decade at this point. So it would be very strange if I were to present something that was more wholesome like a generic “Happy (fill in holiday)!” instead.
Do you have a favorite design from this collection? If so, why?
That’s really quite a tough one. I think that they all have their own unique appeal. I guess if someone put a gun to my head, I would say “Still Not Asking For It” because satirizes not only PETA ads, but also weird, subversive (((feminist))) ads I’ve seen as well.
How do you hope people will react when they see or wear your shirts?
I hope that they react as they do with any of the memes that I’ve been known to post. First, just an initial shock, then hysterical laughter at the sheer absurdity of what they’re seeing.
Can we expect more holiday-themed collections from you in the future?
I would think so. For me in general, every day is Halloween, so it can be said that nearly all of my designs are somewhat Halloween-themed. However, since I’m not the artist of the pictures that you see on my shirts, only the words, what I’m able to work with is contingent upon what art is provided to me. So, if there are new holiday-themed art pieces that inspire anything in me, then I would love to continue holiday releases in the future. That said, being new at this, I still need to decide to go forward with limited-time availability & only have seasonal products up for a short period or just keep everything up year-round. I might mention that I also tried to soft-launch some Valentine’s Day designs, but I wouldn’t say that they’re strictly for Valentine’s Day. They just had general themes of love/romantic relationships, so I slapped the words ‘Valentine’s Day’ on the item title. I’m thinking of pulling them down just because I don’t think it’s good from an SEO standpoint to leave holiday keywords up year-round. Any feedback from more veteran E-commerce professionals would be greatly appreciated here.
If you want to check out any of the gear I use for product design/content creation, go to my Affiliate Links page & buy yourself something nice!
