Don't Believe Everything You See on Facebook, Issue #2

The meme this parodies is mercifully in its final death throes, but if you spent any amount of time on Facebook in the last couple weeks, you no doubt noticed this bit of obnoxiousness more than a couple times. If you spend a lot of time of Facebook, you watched it start out as a mild diversion and then grow into a behemoth clogging your newsfeed.

It wasn’t terribly clever, and it only seemed to be amusing to the people who were sharing it. It also sent a message that needs to be stamped out right here and right now: Most people – your family, your friends, your co-workers, etc. - are in fact not thinking about what you do, and that’s because most people are too busy thinking about themselves and what they’re doing or going to do, which, in turn, is exactly why this meme ran so fucking rampant. It’s a Catch-22 of massive Facebookian proportions. It presents the delusion that the rest of the world cares about your nonsense, when in fact, they just simply do not, as they are too busy caring about their own.

Oh, I hear your cries! “Lighten up, Ross! We were just having fun!” Well your fun is impeding my sharing and receiving of useful information, and it’s pissing me off. If Facebook is indeed a tremendous waste of time, this meme is entirely emblematic of why.

On the surface, this is good times and great oldies, but lurking beneath is something much more sinister (but let’s face it: oldies can be pretty sinister to begin with). I think the implication here is that our parents were somehow “better” than the parents of today (i.e. “us”) because they let kids run recklessly and didn’t think so hard about whether or not bones would end up broken. Fair enough, but it’s not going to convince me that there’s anything wrong with not wanting your kid to be rushed to the emergency room if it can be prevented with a little common sense.

More importantly, however, when my son was a preteen, I’d never have let him go out of the house wearing a half shirt like the kid in the background. I might also have advised him to not sit like Farrah Fawcett when someone nearby has a camera in hand. Take that, parents of the ‘70s!

I looked up other pictures of Gillian McKeith. There’s no question that she’s not as conventionally attractive as Ms. Lawson, but there’s also no question that whoever put this together chose the most unflattering photograph they could find of her. Had the following shot been used instead, the graphic wouldn’t be nearly as dramatic.

For the record, I’m a big fan of both exercise and butter (though probably not at the same time).

Yes, let’s use fictional people (from the ‘60s, no less) to attempt to prove some kind of idiotic point about marriage today. What was that? Oh yeah, they were based on some comics from the ‘30s! I’ll see your Gomez and Morticia Addams and raise you a J.R. and Sue Ellen Ewing.

This is such a prime example of liberal hubris, it must be called out. Something that really gets under my skin about Democrats is their inability to know when to just fucking stop; to realize when they’ve won. It’s like that guy who thinks he’s a comedian, but he’s not, because he’s unable to instinctively recognize when a joke has reached its end. Here, someone has put together an impressive list of accomplishments by Barack Obama. It would stand tall, proud and strong, but they just had to go ruin the entire message with that last sentence: “What did you do in the last three years at your job?” You know why I didn’t do any of those things at my job in the last three years? Because I’m not the fucking President of the United States, you sanctimonious asshole!

This is why I do not go to Superbowl parties. Don’t play with your food, especially when you have this much of it (and all of it so unhealthy!) Last month I realized that I’m invited to more Superbowl parties than any real holiday of the year. Are there really more people gathering together on that one day than any other? Come on, folks, take just half the dollars you’re putting into this nonsense and do something cool on Halloween. You know how many Halloween parties I was invited to last year? None. Me, of all people! It beggars the imagination, yes it does. 

Don't Believe Everything You See on Facebook, Issue #1

Oh, how I'd love to get behind this one, if not for the fact that the person who put it together was obviously stoned (in light of this, who knows if the facts are even correct?). Bad spelling, awful grammar, and terrible punctuation. This is an online nightmare. What's most amazing is that marijuana is spelled correctly not once, but twice! Anytime these little placards fail to get the basics right, I loathe them even if I agree with the message. Don't encourage bad writers to keep doing this stuff by passing their handiwork around! 

This one I totally agree with in sentiment, but the way it’s put together rather kills the whole point, because it’s an apples vs. oranges comparison. There’s no question that women are sold a “look” these days that’s unhealthy to attempt to reach and certainly to maintain. Necrophiliacs aside, few would find the top row attractive, which is why, on the surface, this works. But those pictures are stalkery, paparazzi-type shots.* Those women did not choose to be photographed in those positions, in those moments. They aren’t meant to be seen like this. This is seriously trying to convince me that Keira Knightly isn’t a bangable babe, yet I know better, because I’ve, like, watched her movies. With proper lighting and camera angles, they look fine, because that’s the business they’re in. The real problem is that everyone thinks they have to look like a movie star or a model these days to be considered attractive.

Conversely, the photos on the bottom row are clearly shot by professional photographers under ideal circumstances, so of course they’re more pleasing to ogle. It’s got nothing to do with the fact that they’re rubenesque or curvy or whatever term you want to use to describe them. I’m sure there was a surplus of moments in Marilyn Monroe’s life in which she looked like utter hell – it’s just that the paparazzi didn’t exist back then (at least not in the way they do today) to capture those looks. There also wasn’t much of an audience for that sort of gawking back then. People enjoyed believing the illusion of beauty more, I think, so they weren't so quick to tear it down. The top row of photos exists only because there’s now a public desire to drag our fantasy icons down to our level so we might feel better about ourselves, especially if it means making an actress like Kirsten Dunst look bad in the process. It needn’t exist if we simply recognize that we live in reality, and these people present us with illusion, and ne’er shall the two meet.   

*Or at least three of them are – who knows what that stupid bitch Heidi is up to? That girl could be photographed taking a massive dump and she’d be elated that someone was interested in what she was doing.

Folks still use the whole “let’s compare those who disagree with us to Hitler” tactic! It'd be amazing if it weren't so silly. This was huge a year or two ago with Obama, which showed how out of ideas his opponents really were. Indeed, stooping to the level of comparing the opposition to Hitler means you've lost your argument. Yeah, whoever put this doozy together is comparing the pro-choice movement to Adolph Hitler, and they have the gall to back it up with a quote from Dr. King. Because Hitler molested kitty cats and puppy dogs and King shit rose petals everywhere he went. This is a perfect quote for these people to use to try to get their point across, because it ignores all the variables in between their black and white view of the world. They’re welcome to it. It’s less offensive than it is predictable and boring, which is pretty much how I see rabid pro-lifers at this point. For those who are interested in the text these words came from (which of course had nothing to do with abortion), you can find it here, in King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”

This is one of the most unnerving bits I’ve seen on Facebook. Look closely at the photo. Study it for a bit. See it? Hint: It’s almost dead center.

Most people freak out over this. I'll admit it: I did, too. But why? It's not the fucking Ring 3. So there’s a black girl hiding between two Asian girls, and she managed to get into the shot. My reaction to this photo makes me feel incredibly racist. The only reason it’s at all scary is because she’s dark. Honestly, I don’t know what else there is to say, except that this photo should maybe be used as a litmus test to figure out how far we really haven’t come in the past 100 years as a society. Does it freak out black folks, too? If it does, is it then fine?

  

Speaking of being freaked out by black folks, this is problematic on several levels, but mostly it's grounded in no version of reality that any thinking person will acknowledge exists. To wit, I also don’t believe anyone who dares to pass this around is thinking about what the message here is when they’re sharing it. This is the snarky, online equivalent of the ostrich burying its head in the sand. (Careful about how you laugh, lest you choke on the sand.)

What folks who insist on passing this sort of thing around don’t realize - whilst giggling amongst themselves at the “funny,” or even worse, actually believing that there’s any truth to it - is that it’s this attitude that could very probably lead to the end of their party. It lends them zero credibility and speaks to the one thing that’s going to be the undoing of the Republican party, and that’s that it no longer stands for anything. Republicans don’t appear to like anything, or even believe in anything anymore. All they know how to do is oppose, and unfortunately that just isn’t the reality of the world we live in any longer. It’s not enough to oppose; folks gotta be doers as well.

So if this photoshopped bit of nonsense really means anything at all, the rubble Obama is surveying is the wreckage of the Republican party itself. And that’s sad, because this country needs them. We need differing points of view – debate! - to keep the U.S. moving forward. But a debate cannot merely consist of, in the immortal words of Messrs. M. Python, “the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says.” For it to work, it must be “a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.” It isn’t just saying “no it isn’t.”