Emotional Blackmail on Facebook

Here we go again.

It seems like every other day I open up Facebook and the first thing I see goes something like this:

If you have (insert relationship here) who (insert warm-fuzzy-feeling-inducing behavior or victim label here), then post this to your Facebook status for at least 2 hours OR YOU DON’T LOVE JESUS!!!

Before I continue, I just want to state for the record that I, too, have had loved ones who had cancer, work hard, are cute, are fun, died, or ate peanut butter and jelly in a bowl with a spoon right in front of me and didn’t even offer me a bite, and I LOVE JESUS, TOO!

This is my heartfelt, but surely futile, plea for Facebook users everywhere to please, please stop cluttering up your wall with all this nonsense. I’m sorry to put it so bluntly (I don’t know any other way), so please take it in the nicest possible way, but this is silly!

I’m kind of curious as to why people are so eager to pass on this trite sentimentalism. Do they think this proves their love for whomever, or their devotion to whatever cause is coming down the pipe today? I doubt it. Facebookers, and everyone with an IQ of 85 or above must know that by posting this stuff every day, all they’re really doing is cheapening whatever relationship or cause it is they claim to care about so deeply…don’t they?

Let me spell this out, since I obviously have nothing better to do today: It doesn’t prove your love for your mother to paste someone else’s thoughts to your wall on Mother’s Day, especially when 20,000 other people have copied and pasted the exact sentiment, right down to the misplaced comma, on their own walls in the last 12 hours. Just call the lady! I hear they like that. If you really want to tell everyone how much you love your mommy, tell them what you think of her in your own humble words.

Further, how does posting anything on your Facebook wall help cancer patients? I know, I know. “Raising awareness” is the cool thing to do, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be a lot cooler to, I dunno, donate some time or money to these causes–or just pray for them?

Rest assured, we are all quite aware of these diseases. Sitting around and thinking collective kind thoughts about sufferers of Morgellon’s disease is not really helping anyone. (This reminds me of a post of mine a while back about true charity, if you’re interested. If you’re not, the quick and dirty version is that we’ve replaced true charity with feel-good words and wishful thinking.)

If we all stop posting this status-spam right now, researchers will still need funds, daddies will still be the coolest thing evah, and puppies will still die gruesome deaths at the hands of evil Republicans. We’re not helping anyone with this cut-and-paste “love”, I promise.

My hunch is that these social media abusers (women, all) just have very kind hearts, see someone else posting how wonderful they think their hubbies and grandmothers are, and begin to feel horribly guilty if they don’t post the ever-so-brilliantly worded meme. After all, they said you have to do it if you love Jesus! I love Jesus, and it’s just a few clicks, right? Yeah. It’s just a few clicks to hide your updates, too, but I don’t do it!

I rarely see men do this. You know why? Because men (and a few stoic women whom I admire and try to emulate) don’t give a rat’s patootie what some person they barely know thinks of their unwillingness to forward a chain status for the greater good.

I hope someday the scourge of Facebook emotional blackmail will be defeated, but I doubt it. After all, I’m still receiving chain emails that I first saw back in 2001. THE SAME ONES, over and over. I feel certain that I read about this circle of Hell in Dante’s Inferno.

You people have got to stop doing this to each other! You won’t. I know you won’t. But I like you too much to “hide” you, so I thought I’d at least ask you to think about it before you post that next meme, and that’s a status update from the heart.