If there was one thing I could remove from the universe, it would be those feel-good pictures with the cute little poems on them. Not because I hate pictures of cats or am not sympathetic to anyone who happens to have cancer, but because of what always goes along with them: the insinuation that if I do not pass it on to every single person that I know that I am a totally terrible, horrible, person and that I don’t care about anyone but myself.
I hate that kind of thing. Sure, I also hate bullying. I hate the fact that so many people in this world are dying from diseases. I realize that there are children starving on this earth. But me posting about it on facebook or forwarding it in an email is not contributing anything useful to anyone.
It’s surprising how many people feel the same way I do. But for some reason, we never seem to do anything but complain to other people and whine on our blogs; we never confront the person who tried to get us to share or send the post/email/letter. The closest I have ever seen anyone get to telling off a person to their face is my mother, though at the time she didn’t realize that she was.
I don’t know if anyone remembers actual chain letters (snail mail, to clarify, for those of you too young to remember), but the procedure to send them was to write out however many copies you wanted and then send them to your friends, leaving off a return address so that they wouldn’t know who sent the letter. My mother recieved one once, and thought it was ridiculous like the other 97% of the population. She was expressing her amusement and bewilderment at it to myself and some acquaintances, saying that she didn’t know who could have sent it to her; she didn’t think she knew anyone who would actually pass on a chain letter. Several days later, she said to me, “Do you remember when we were talking about that chain letter I got?” She reminded me that one of the women who had been present for the conversation was usually very chatty, but while we were talking she hadn’t said a word. “Now that I look at it a little closer, it looks like it’s probably her handwriting,” she told me.
As much as I love my beautiful cousins, the drawback of being friends with them on facebook is that at least one per day I get to see one of them share a photo or a copied and pasted status that insinuates that if I do not share it too, that I am a terrible person. Today’s has a picture of Jesus with a thought bubble containing the words “Is there a place for me on your wall?” At the bottom it said “if yes share this photo on your wall” and underneath, it urged again to share the photo, in addition to the admonition: “keep scrolling and ignore if there is NO place for JESUS...”
I had had enough. I thought, “There’s no way my cousins can feel my annoyance by the fact that I don’t share every single thing they post that urges me to.” In fact, I don’t think any of our mutual friends share these photos either, except my other cousins.
I resolved to never again stay silent when something like this annoys me. I’m sure that my comments against it won’t deter my cousins much from sharing things like this on their own facebook walls, but it will let them know that I don’t appreciate it, and maybe that will motivate them to cut back a little.
If not, maybe I’ll try a facebook status like this: “97% of people hate chain statuses, but 99% of them will stay silent about it. Repost this if you hate copied and pasted statuses!”
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