99% of You Will Not Comment on This Post

Some of my least favorite things on Facebook are the chain statuses. You know the ones. “Re-post this if you think clubbing baby seals is mean. I bet *insert made up statistic here, usually in the 90s*% of you won’t re-post. <3 for those who ARE BRAVE ENOUGH TO SAY THAT CLUBBING BABY SEALS IS WRONG!” I have a friend who has posted about this recently as a status update. Liking and/or re-posting a status update does not do a thing. I don’t need to prove that I would hug a baby seal rather than club it, that I think cancer is bad, and that I love my husband/children/siblings/parents/planet, etc. by re-posting a poorly-worded status.

I think most who start and re-post these things mean well, and I usually just scroll past them. I used to feel that they were harmless, if annoying. Then I began to think more about it. Do people really think they are making a difference? Is re-posting a status self-satisfying enough that it may prevent someone from doing something useful? Does it even send a subtly harmful message while trying to send a positive one? I think the answer to that last question is most certainly, “Yes.” Let’s take the anti-bullying C&P status. There are a few, but they are essentially all the same, and they read something like this:

On the surface, it seems harmless enough. Don’t bully. You don’t know these people, and you’re piling hurt on the undeserving, but there is an implication, however subtle and unintended, that there are people who deserve to be called terrible names and pushed around. What if the girl that was called a slut had been having sex with a different guy every night? What if the pregnant girl had consensual sex? How about that boy who was jeered as being lame? What if he just went home and read comic books all night, nothing grand and noble, just normal? Let’s think about the boy who was crying. What if he’s just really sensitive? And the old man with the scars? What if he got those setting off illegal fireworks or actually doing something extremely harmful to society, like cooking meth? Would they then deserve the mockery and nastiness heaped upon them?

People shouldn’t bully. Period. It doesn’t matter if the girl being called a slut has had sex w/ 0 people or 100 people. She doesn’t deserve it. I won’t even get into how promiscuity is encouraged in young men while being frowned upon in young women, and how dangerous that is for both sexes, or how I frankly feel that anyone who is that young and that promiscuous is battling demons, regardless of their combination of Xs and Ys. That’s an entirely different post. I also won’t get into what I think of the word slut beyond saying that it is foul, and is used to keep women in line. This virgin/fallen woman theme carries on to the next example of the pregnant teen who was raped. What an awful scenario. Why would that need to be the case to offer her friendship and support? It seems to me that anyone in a crisis pregnancy is deserving of at least that much. Does anyone need to be called lame for any reason or have insults heaped upon him because he cries? In a society that prizes physical beauty and eternal youth the way that ours does, is there anyone who should have to hear about scars that he bears for whatever reason? Is it only a war hero who should be treated with a modicum of dignity and respect? You don’t need to know someone or their situation to refrain from being nasty to them. You simply have to, I don’t know, be nice.

What those who bully, and even those who write and share statuses like the ones above don’t seem to realize is that not one person deserves to be treated poorly and made to feel less than human. We are all deserving of love and kindness, regardless of our sins. What one person says about another is less a reflection on the person being spoken about than it is on the person speaking. The things people choose to say about and to each other are often a reflection of their own insecurities and fears.  Maybe they fear they are actually in possession of the trait they are giving the other. Maybe they are lacking something their victim has. What they definitely need is compassion and a new perspective on valuing life and dignity. It isn’t just kids, either. They learn it by watching us. They see the subtler forms of bullying pass as entertainment for the masses. They listen to us snipe about each other. They are exposed to what passes for political discourse in this country. How are we to tell them to be kind, to treat each other as human beings on an interpersonal level when we can’t manage to do that very same thing as a society? When the best we can seem to offer is a status update that implies that not everyone is deserving of the small mercies of an outstretched hand and a smile? If the cited status is the best we can offer each other in our efforts to help stop bullying, then we have a long way to go, my friends.