Look, I know it’s wrong to be judgmental, and I’m certainly a miserable accumulation of flaws crammed into a stained T-shirt myself, but I can’t help but think that the person who made these godawful bumper stickers and applied them to the back of their Toyota Sienna has to be one of the absolute worst people ever to metabolize, at least in the context of driving and cars. Oh, and that’s not how you use the word “incredulously.”
I saw this on a Facebook post to the Opposite Talk FB page, and while I don’t yet have all the information about the context of the photo (I’ve reached out to the poster to find out more), what we can see here is, in the context of homemade bumper stickers, absolutely staggering.
The sticker is really a constellation of four related sticker segments, all printed in black on red, as though coming from a colossal label-maker. Here’s what the sticker says:
“Well, exc-u-u-se me, for holding you up......with my inconsiderate attempt to obey they legal speed limit...... Which, incredulously, applies to you, also.”
Ugggh. Even typing that felt terrible. There’s so much awful going on here—they dated and hackneyed “exc-u-u-se me” start, the fussy, self-righteous tone, the pedantic attempt to use the word “incredulously” even though that word makes no sense in that context—it should be “incredibly;” “incredulously” means that someone has trouble believing something, not the subject itself, which may be improbable or incredible but the act of obeying the speed limit isn’t something that has trouble believing—fuck it, what am I doing?
Who am I trying to convince here? This sticker is just terrible terrible terrible. It’s fine to obey the speed limit! Have at it! It’s a good idea! But this, this whole tone, the whole underlying concept behind this, this implies a driver who sees slights in every passing car, is resentful of every other driver, and has to be—absolutely has to be—one of the most miserable bastards you could ever be trapped in a gold minivan with.
Seriously, fuck this law-abiding, thesaurus-misreading jackass.