Valentine's Shitty

Listen, Jared, I hate to be the guy to tell you this, but this whole "He went to Jared" business? Yeah. That's never going to take off. It's simply not going to happen.

I get what you're doing. You're trying to make the word "Jared" synonymous in the public consciousness with "jewelry." It's happened before. Kleenex and Band-Aids being excellent examples. I'm not ignorant to what your plan is. I'm simply saying your plan will fail. Miserably.

See, the thing about Kleenex and Band-Aids developing into terms for the product rather than terms for the brand is that it happened naturally. Band-Aid was the first and the only of it's kind for a while, so nobody bothered to say, "Sweetie, hand me the adhesive cotton bandage" they just said, "Give me the Band-Aid you stupid whore." (I know, I kind of changed the underlying situation between those two sentences, but the principle remains.)

Hell, Band-Aid was so successful at this that now they're trying with their own advertising campaign to make it so that people know there's a difference between "adhesive bandages" and "Band-Aids." I guess they're losing sales because people are buying the generic bandages and realizing they're exactly the same as the brand-name. So now their jingle is beyond ridiculous: "I am stuck on Band-Aid brand 'cause Band-Aids stuck on me." They have to point out that they're a brand name. Now that's ubiquity.

Back to the point in question, though: Jared. First of all, you're not ubiquitous. You're the opposite of ubiquitous. You're not the best or the cheapest and you're not on anybody's radar. Off the top of my head I would say that Gordon's and Kay's are better than you. And I know literally nothing about jewelry. The brand Jared even sounds scummy. It's a guy's name, and it's a first name. It doesn't even sound like a family owns the business, it just sounds like some guy decided he wanted to open a store.

It's more jarring to me to refer to a jewelry store as "Jared" than it is to refer to the entire Dave Matthews Band as "Dave." Which I guess is what you're going for. But here's the thing: if anybody ever tried to explain to me that their fiance proposed or whatever by saying, "He went to Jared" I would slap the shit out of them. I would say, "What are you thinking? Why didn't you just tell me that he proposed, instead of acting like a lunatic or a shill or both?" And, anyway, what the hell do I care where he got the ring from? If it's a nice ring, and I happen to care about jewelry, I might ask later on. But most likely I'll just admire it or secretly snicker at it, and not care where it came from.

And how did she know in the first place? Picture this. Beautiful, candelit dinner. In between the foie gras and the salad your adoring beau gets down on one kness. You stare into his eyes. It's the moment you've both been waiting for this whole relationship. Hell, it's the moment you've both been waiting for all your lives. His lips quaver ever so slightly as he opens them. He pours out all his thoughts and feelings, reminds you of the first time you met, and asks you to be his for the rest of your natural lives.

"Will you marry me darling?" he asks.

And you respond, "That depends. Where'd you get the rock? Because if it wasn't at Jared, fuck you."