Okay. This has been bothering me for quite some time now, but I didn't want to rant about it on Facebook, and had definitely WAY more to say about it than could be done in 140 characters, so hello blog post! My heart hurts, and I'm going to tell you why, and plead that if you're one of these people, you take a second to think about your actions next time. Or you know, just stop doing this.
The internet, what a melting pot of clusterfuck hey? You got your grumpy cats/bear waving (personal FAVORITE)/puppy/heartwarming videos, your engagement posts & baby announcements, your memes and any news article you could ever want, PINTEREST, and literally everything you could ever wonder is just a google search away - sorry Bing but like, let's be real. Case in point, today I learned what "Predatory Lending" was, and the other day I googled "Executive Privilege", not to mention went down a rabbit hole of old Hollywood feuding. The internet is great.
You know what else? The internet is the fucking WORST. You don't need to look too far to find your dirty pond scum section where racists get together and flick their teeny weiners over the injustice of equality, or misogynists come together to discuss how we weak women want our voices heard and how this all started with that damn Wonder Woman, god we are just such bitches for expecting respect, am I right!? #sitthefuckdown. The internet is the new wild west, where everything can be found, good bad or extremely horrendously ugly, and you get to find out which of your relatives and those in your personal circle were secretly totally prejudiced all these years! Supes fun.
But one thing is increasingly becoming too much for me, and that is: videos, GIFS or memes that blatantly embarrass/shame/mock a person, a human being, unbeknownst to them. They're embarrassing, humiliating, and my heart literally breaks for the poor person who was caught on camera doing whatever, and is now being laughed at/shamed all over the world. I HATE being embarrassed or the butt of someone's mean joke, I absolutely loathe it, and more than that I HATE feeling second hand embarrassment. It's one of those things that stays with me for days after. There are literally TV shows and movies I won't watch if I have to feel someone else's embarrassment because of it. I'm a very empathetic person, and I just can't handle it.
I feel like it speaks to a bigger issue, the lack of compassion in our world these days. It's so easy to click "share", that it's so easily forgotten that on the other end of that share is a person, a real life functioning member of their own society, who had the grave misfortune of being caught in a less than flattering position. That poor woman a few weeks ago caught picking her nose & eating it on camera at a sports game? Was that gross as hell? Totally. Did she then deserve to be virally shamed ALL ACROSS THE WORLD?! Absolutely not. Just last night I was on Twitter (because, duh, #ComeyDay), and a video was being shared of an older man in the UK who missed a high five and was being laughed at. That man was already probably feeling embarrassed as is, but to then be the next 15 minutes of fame star for that little cringe inducing moment? It's rude. It's mean, it's rude, and we should know better. That's what embarrassing animal fail videos are for, leave people out of it.
So, in conclusion. If all of my empathetic, compassionate people of the world could unite and just inject a little bit of that into everyone, maybe we can stop with the unnecessary public shaming? I say unnecessary because there are definitely exceptions to every rule, but keep in mind the old saying you learned in kindergarten: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". Like, here's the thing, our world is in a bit of a shortage of human decency (it seems, not everyone or everywhere, but there's definitely no shortage of horrible examples if you really want to fuck your day up), and I want to believe we still have a lot of compassion and kindness in our tanks to give away. Prove me right, please. If you feel compelled to share a GIF/meme/video that is not putting someone in a nice light, or is solely existing to shame someone, put yourself in their shoes. Do you want that kind of notoriety? I know I certainly wouldn't wish that on anyone, not even to the assholes who I feel like could stand it. If I was the reason someone was shedding extra tears in their day, well then that's reason enough to change my actions. I hope you do the same, 20 people on my Facebook list that read this. <3 thanks peeps.
I hate the shaming as well. It's so unnecessary. What's the point & what benefit does it do? Nothing. Bleh.
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