I can live with the insipid memes, a few words of inspiration transposed onto a meadow at sunset. Sometimes they are inspirational, a little bit, or at least clever. Not often, but somebody’s making the effort, and nobody gets hurt.
Cute Puppy
I can live with people who post absurd amounts of baby photos. You’re parents. Some gush a bit more than others. I usually just keep scrolling, unless it’s a relative or close friend, and then I give it a like. It doesn’t take any time, it doesn’t mess up my day.
I know some people get irritated (I have read this on facebook) with people who post too many vacation photos, but I rather like those. I know, it’s a bit like “Hey, everybody, I’m in Japan/Hawaii/Dubai/Paris and you’re not” but their sending photos doesn’t actually change the fact that I’m here and they’re there, and since I’m pretty happy with where I am, I see it as a vicarious trip around the world, every day.
I don’t mind photos of food, as long as they are good photos, of good food, and maybe they include a recipe, and it’s not just a picture of green carrot-jello and a caption that says “HaHa, remember when your mama made this crap for family picnics in the ’60s?” What, is that supposed to improve my appetite?
I’m not adverse to animal pictures, or at any rate the cute ones. Animal rights advocates who post pictures of abused dogs and stuff really bring me down, though. Sooner or later, I’ll defriend them.
I’m not bothered with a heated political argument, or bad language, although apparently Quora is. Don’t worry, I didn’t get banned, or even suspended, just a warning that I was in violation of their ‘be nice’ policy. Maybe because I said ‘bullshit’ which I thought was part of normal conversation any more.
What I really don’t like, though, are these fake news sites. Sometimes they call themselves satire, but they’re not. Satire is supposed to be funny, or at least obviously fictional, and so many of them are not either.
The one that got me this morning was a headline about Sarah Palin, saying she’d said “We needed Trump before Obama, so he could have stopped the Kenyan Muslim usurper,” or some such.
Sounds like her, and there was a predictable round of outrage, but I tried to find the site and couldn’t (kept getting ‘the page you are looking for does not exist or is unavailable from your computer’ and stuff like that), and other excerpts from it seemed to be not true stuff as well.
I guess I get why they do it (many possible reasons, such as a) they are in junior high school and think it’s funny, b) they are adults who still act like they are in junior high and think it’s funny or c) they are assholes.
What I don’t get is how we can accept it. I suppose there is little enough we can do legally, if there were laws against lying, prosecutors would have a case file backup from here to eternity, just on the dating sites.
And I’m not saying sites like this should be banned. Freedom of the Internet and all that.
I’m just saying that maybe people who make these sites should maybe get a rash on a part of their body they can’t reach. May they have all the homeless people of a mid-sized American city move into their living room. May they be caught in bed with the person, or whatever, which would embarrass them most.
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