Just Stop

The other day, a well meaning friend of mine posted a status update on Facebook depicting a scene of a child being abused by his mother and ended the status with “copy and paste this for 1 hour if you’re against CHILD ABUSE”.   When I read the status, I physically winced as it reminded me of things that my family had to live through with my biological father.  I actually felt like I was violated, reading that status. 

There are a lot of these types of statuses out there: “My country is better than any other country in the world, so we shouldn’t help foreigners.  Have the guts to repost this.  1% will repost”, “Copy and paste this if you love your mother.  I bet none of you will.”, “How many people actually read my status and listen to what I have to say.  Copy and paste this to see if your friends actually care about you. Do you dare?”

To those of you who are posting these statues, I beg of you: please stop! 

These statuses are, at best, emotionally manipulative.  At worst, they make me want to not bother reading your status updates, so that when you have something of worth to say, I’m not going to see it.  I don’t support child abuse; I do advocate more support and awareness for mental illnesses; I do love my mom and step-dad.   I don’t, however, love these passive aggressive bullying tactics your statuses employ.   Furthermore, the ones that state “only 1% of people will have the guts to repost this” Is intellectually insulting.  You don’t actually think there are any statistics on the repostability (yeah, I totally just made that word up) of a particular status, do you? 

I guess these statuses are just the next generation of chain letters, but those are equally as awful.  Writing a letter 21 times for 21 different friends within 7 days while standing on my head will not cure that little Lithuanian girl’s alopecia!  If you actually believe that, then I’d like to introduce you to this Nigerian prince I know.  My mother, who I love very much despite the fact that I didn’t copy and paste the status that “proves” just how much I love her, wrote a great post about breaking chain letters that I think every one of you who posts these statuses should read.  Until then, I’m going to repost a status my fiancé wrote that sums this up perfectly: 

“Don't use your Facebook status to tell me to do stuff - you don't really think I hate you, ignore you, and you're not going to kill that puppy if I don't do what you say. Repost this and I'll know you read it, thought it was witty, and agreed with it - I won't read any more into it than that.”