Monday, January 11, 2010

Ghastly Facebook memes

"Put ♥ this ♥ on ♥ your ♥ status ♥ if ♥ you ♥ know ♥ someone ♥ who ♥ has ♥ or ♥ had ♥ cancer! ♥ All I wish for in 2010 is a CURE! ♥ Dear G-d, I pray for the cure for cancer. Amen. ♥ 93% WON'T Copy and Paste this, will YOU ? ♥ XXX."

Urgh. There's been a lot of FaceBook status chain-letters/memes of late. I didn't like the one that spread consisting of telling a colour: the colour of knickers worn, (as it's nobody's business but me own and it's just eye-rollingly juvenile). According to the F-Word it supposedly originated as an awareness campaign for breast cancer and was about the colour of bras, which is a weird and creeptastic way of consciousness-raising.

Not that it was noticeably about bras or cancer awareness by the time it got to me.

I find this new one possibly even more repugnant 'though. It's exploitative, emotional blackmail, making push-button sentimentality out of cancer. 93%* won't put it on their profile because it's cheesy, futile and irrelevant.

I know and love some people with cancer and if they saw this crap on my profile, it wouldn't make them feel good and show them I care. It's like making them a trophy, making their cancer about me. "Look at me, look at me, I'm in that caring, affected 7%!"

Vomit.

And then there's the prayer. I don't subscribe to that, and the presumption of the writer of this idiocy ticks me off. Not everyone shares your religion, dingbat. Do they want me to edit out the bits I don't subscribe to, or do they not want my kind?

I don't subscribe to a lot of nausea-inducing heart symbols either. Pah.


* Although I appreciate a made-up at random statistic when I see one. 87% of the time.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can't stand all this crap either. I too thought the "colour of underwear" one was really stupid, and this one you've just quoted - well, when I see these things, I just think they're extremely insincere and pretty foul. There's no thought gone into posting this stuff - if you care about the cause, you can think of your own thing to say. There's another one flying around about stillborn babies, angels etc. - ugh.

I know these are important causes, but this "copy, paste and pass on" crap just cheapens it all, and I reckon it's far more about someone getting attention and seeing how far they can spread their virtual net.

I hate being told to do something because everyone else likes it, so I'm with you on this. Generally pretty vile.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for stating this so clearly and well. The statuses annoy me for the same reasons as well. They really make me wonder about the intelligence of the people posting them.

Mephitis said...

Glad I'm not alone on this :D.

Anonymous said...

Exactly. People who post these things are turning the Facebook status update into some kind of parody of an awareness campaign. I refuse to post awareness memes on principle.