This is a public service announcement of sorts.
There is a lot of misery in the world. You only have to watch five minutes of BBC News to know that a lot of people are ill, missing or exploded. This is the primary reason that I simply do not watch, listen to or read the news. "You're an ignorant idiot, then." I hear you exclaim! No. I'm not. I'm well aware of the fact that a lot of people, in the history of time, have been ill, missing or exploded. It's happened many times before and it will happen many times again.
What I do not need, is to be reminded of it on a daily basis. Not only is it distracting me from status updates from friends whose lives are more exciting than mine, photos of everyone's dinner and jokes that have been stolen from Reddit, but it is nonsensical misery-mongering at its absolute finest.
"1 Like = 1 Prayer," "Like this to support cancer research," "This person is ill, missing or exploded. Like this if you don't think they deserve it. Ignore it if you love Satan." Firstly, nobody deserves it, whatever "it" is in that particular misery-share du jour.
We are all very well aware that animal cruelty, missing children, babies with brain tumours and disfigured national heroes are terrible tragedies, but a click of your finger is going to do diddly squat besides share the gloom and very mildly inflate your own ego. "That 0.5 second action makes me a good person today. Go me."
No.
What it actually does is make money for the idiots who run the page that the image was shared from. Nine times out of ten, the person in the photograph has absolutely no idea that their face is being plastered all over Facebook for the entire world to cry over. As it turns out, more often than not, our emotions and sense of morality are being manipulated and exploited to score some cash via a process called "like farming." The more likes and shares an image that they post receives, the more exposure their page gets, and the more valuable it becomes to advertisers.
Not only are you ruining everyone's day by drawing their attention to total and utter heartache, but you're feeding the trolls. But GO YOU, right??
So, this year, I have made a vow. Every person who shares one of these bowel cleansing "like this if you have two ears," (No offence, Van Gogh.) "Like this if you know someone who is ill, missing or exploded" or "Cancer sucks, here's a photo of a beautiful woman with no hair." images is going to get removed from my feed. It's as simple as that.
If you want to make any kind of a difference, donate to charity, do a fun run, have a bake sale, help out at a homeless shelter, stop buying puppies from breeders who inbreed their animals and rescue a dog from a shelter... do anything, absolutely anything but share this tripe on Facebook.
Facebook is for posting links to videos of dogs on trampolines, vague statuses about friends who have pissed you off, and photographs of said "friends" passed out and covered in permanent marker penises.
Use it correctly.
