Leaflets

• Posted by Darling
• Category: Articles

 

Leafleters and other pavement based evils.
By Gareth Winstanley.

The fact is leafleters are nothing more than real life spam. They just can't accept I don't want bits of card advertising pizza, or two pounds off some useless product on selected Thursdays if I spend over ninety six pounds.

Due to leafleters, every time I walk down the high street I now have to pretend to have no hands by hiding them in up my coat sleeves. For a time I was considering using pirate hooks for hands, (Hoping the sharpened metal would deter them.) till I realised they'd just impale the leaflets on the end, as if they were letter spikes.

Their zombie like impulse to hand out paper can't be deterred. In the past I've tried tearing leaflets up in their faces, but they've just automatically offered me another leaflet with a look of sad deperation in their eyes. This made me feel bad, which inevitable led to boiling resentment that was going to be expressed in one of two ways;a blood bath, or as an editorial piece for Weebls Stuff. It was a close call.

Many people can't understand why I think leaflets are such serious problem, because making them only kills trees. But what if it killed little wooden puppies? I think then, they'd all be a lot more concerned.

Of course leafleters aren't the only pavement based irritation, there's also the tin rattlers. Now I'm not against charity per se, but I am against having plastic boxes shaken at me like a baby's rattle. If they're going to pretend to be children why don't they go all the way, and wear huge man-nappies. Hopefully that might deter anyone normal from joining their herd.

The next step up the annoyance scale from tin rattlers are the bucket ratters. They have an even more insatiable greed for change. I mean, just how much money do these orphans they're helping need? If they take the next logical step up from bucket rattling, I expect we'll soon see skip rattlers too.

A common retort to my anti-leafleting stance is;
'Why are you complaining? It's free, and they sometimes give out vouchers, or shampoo samples!'

Well, you can't justify something crap by making it free. Lots of things are free, syphilis is free, genocide is free, leaflets are free. There's usually a good reason why certain things have to be free, it's because they're physically impossible to sell, or give away, or force into cold dead hands at gunpoint.

Now at this point your probably thinking; 'It's all very well complaining about this brand of paper based evil, but how can I avoid it?' Well, listed below are the three most common street hustling ploys, used by leafleters, market researchers and tin rattlers, and more importantly how to avoid them.

Hyperactive Psychobabble
This involves the leafleter babbling insanely quickly about whatever they're promoting in the short space of time they grasp your attention for. These people either sound like they're on some sort of warped sugar high, or channelling the inner monologues of demons, but in reality are just out of work drama students who answered an ad in the Gumtree for 'promotional work'.

Often when approached by these gibbering mentalists people just take their leaflets out of panic, and hope their souls haven't been stolen. Or, if they're market researchers, start answering their questions, while hoping one of them isn't going to be; 'Can I please borrow your skin?'

Both of these answers are wrong, the only solution is to appear more demented than they are, thereby persuading them to stay well clear of you. When approached, stare directly into their eyes, without uttering a word. This has the purpose of making you appear too deranged to leaflet, or speak to. If they persist, just lean forward and breathe deeply, as if taking in their 'scent'. Then lean back, and slowly walk away, all the time maintaining the eye contact.
Psychotic Persistence.

These people who do this won't take no for an answer, they won't accept 'Please leave me alone' either, or even 'I'm calling the police put down that piano wire.' Apparently they; 'Just want to talk to you.' but that's what all psychos say. It also doesn't help that they have some very badly chosen and badly timed conversation openers, things like; 'Hello, do you want to chat about cancer?' No I don't, not at 9 am on a Monday morning, even if it is 'Only going to take a few minutes.'

A common reaction to them refusing to stop following you is to say; 'I'll take your leaflet, I'll do your survey, I'll give you all my change, just don't stalk me anymore.' The correct answer is to say; 'I'd love to talk.' then pull your hand out of your coat pocket to reveal a sock puppet. Only talk through the sock puppet in the third person, I guarantee the conversation will end very quickly.

Politeness Guilt.
This method is pretty much summed up by this train of thought:
'I ignored him, and he said; Have a good day. Damn! Now I'm the bastard! I'd better take his crappy bits of paper, and give him my spare change too.'
Beggars use this tactic as well, except they tend to say 'God bless you.' become an atheist, that makes it meaningless. As for all the non beggars, drown them out with an ipod.