Vintage vinegar valentines: mass-produced insult cards

"Vinegar valentines" are insult greeting cards popular in the 19th and early 20th century. Over at Collectors Weekly, Lisa Hix shares a fine selection of these snarky missives. "Happy Valentine’s Day, I Hate You"

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

MORE: Funny • greeting cards • mean • valentine's day • vintage

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Roose_Bolton

I’m hereby resurrecting the insult “two-bit chump”. How did that EVER fall into disuse?
- Lupus_Yonderboy
  
  Probably because no one knows what “two bits” is nowadays. It’s even more of an insult now as well, because you could actually *buy* something with a quarter when that insult was current.
  - fuzzyfuzzyfungus
    
    One quarter of a byte, or half a nibble, what do I win?
    - Lupus_Yonderboy
      
      Hi-oh! *rimshot*
      
      I can see the “one quarter of a byte” being of more current interest than the original “twenty-five cents”, i.e. this guy is so low in worthy data that he’s a two-bit chump, kinda thing.
      - fuzzyfuzzyfungus
        
        As quoth Weird Al:
        
        “In a 32-bit world you’re a 2-bit user;
        You’ve got your own newsgroup alt.total.loser.”
        
        This was back when it was a 32-bit world, and ‘newsgroup’ wasn’t a totally retro concept, mind you.