I hate subway ads and love culture jamming. So imagine my delight when I stumbled onto the website Printable Cold Stores and Other Adventures in Geek Graffiti, which provides (what else?) printable cold sores to be applied to the smiling, Photoshopped, “perfect” faces that try to sell you everything from cosmetics to contact lenses to cars during your morning commute.

As the site’s creator explains:

Nowhere in advertising is the gap between natural beauty and manufactured perfection more apparent than on subway posters. As we wait for transportation, we are unwillingly assaulted by larger-than-life representations of supposedly beautiful salespeople. The large scale of these ads and their extremely close proximity to the viewer offer up more than perceived intimacy, however… they give us the chance to see the mechanical flaws designed to correct their physical flaws.

Why don’t we just see them for what they are? They are regular people just like us, they just have a team of retouchers waiting at the ready.

Printable cold sores allow us to take action! Bring these people back down to our level, and tell advertisers that you don’t agree with their message.

The site also notes that tagging subway ads is illegal and that the cold sore creator is “merely presenting a theoretical solution to a real-world problem,” rather than endorsing graffiti. Whatever. It made me laugh.

(Link via Gothamist.)