With each passing day it seems our world grows smaller, yet more socially retarded.
This past week I was witness to a repeat of something that had happened to me personally a couple of years ago.
My youngest daughter, Grace, standing in the dining room with a shocked look on her face.. (I should mention, for sake of clarity as I tell the story, she is not my bio-daughter) as she reads, on Facebook, that her grandmother, her biological sperm-donor’s mother, is in the hospital.
No one called her to tell her, she only found out hours later when she happened to check Facebook on her phone. Her aunt had posted it.
Grace was upset, immediately worried about her grandmother. I, on the other hand, was pissed. When did it become acceptable to blurt something like that out on social media without at least telling the family first? If the grandmother had died in the fall that sent her to the hospital would it still have hit Facebook that way rather than a phone call? I somehow get the feeling that the answer to that question is yes.
Some people crave attention above all else. They must immediately, when opportunity presents itself, scream “Look at me! Look at me!”. Anything that will draw that attention is fair game, good, bad, indifferent. They must announce it to the world and smile profusely as the number of ‘Likes’ and comments roll in… The more the better.
A couple of years ago my own grandmother was rushed to the hospital, and my own aunt had it out on Facebook before word got around to the rest of us.. the only time I have spoken to her since then was at my grandmother’s funeral. I have little use for shit like that.
No consideration of the feelings of others. No thought to how they might feel reading such personal news on such a public platform, while strangers, ‘friends’ of the person making the post, comment on it. How many of those ‘friends’ are even friends? Look at your friends list on Facebook. How many of those people do you honestly know? I see people with hundreds and thousands of Facebook friends, yet outside of Facebook they barely interact with anyone., barely know anyone. They barely interact with their own families, yet spill their most personal things out for attention from these cyber-friends to comment on.
I am so frustrated by this that I totally lost the train of thought I was working on and seem to have resorted to rambling and babbling…
I guess, what I want to say is, Think Before You Post.
Is what you are about to spill publically something others might need to know in private first?
Do you really need the attention?
Is your life that shallow that you require the commiseration, or approval, of people you only know as an icon next to a name at the expense of the feelings of your Family, and Real Friends?
If you answered yes to that last question, and I’m on your friends list, expect I won’t be for long. Expect also that your own family probably has little use for it as well.