There are two things I see online that are Immediate Internet Ignores.
I can’t avoid them. I’m not one of those people who can voluntarily turn off twitter or deactivate Facebook and live the Saintly Hallowed lifestyle of the Luddite, the Internet Pure. I work in social media. The first page I open every day is Facebook. Then Medium. Then Tumblr. Then…you get it. While I’m there, I’m working on pages and profiles for clients, but I’m also seeing the daily shares, reblogs and likes of my friends and acquaintances. This is usually a pleasant experience.
The key word in the sentence is usually.
It never fails that some sweet person in my life has a really particular penchant for true life horror stories. Not stuff that could be an episode of Supernatural type horror, but human tragedy horror. Strangers’ Oprah stories. Bad things happening to adorable children. Long letters from 25 year old widowers about their gorgeous dead wives. Sad, but somehow not our business. The stuff of nightmares wrapped in the cheesecloth language of dopey hope.
I do not subscribe to this hooey.
They are a total bummer. And they make for terrible conversation starters. Have you ever sat down at the new local pizza place with a couple of coworkers and tried to fill a short, possibly awkward silence with the grisly deets of the latest blog post from that single dad whose dog has terminal whatever-pets-get and isn’t expected to live through the week? PS tomorrow he’s telling Timmy that Rover’s kicking it, he’s sure to be completely devastated. We know you’ll want to hear every detail of his pain, so expect a blog post RIGHT AFTER THAT TERRIBLE CONVERSATION.
Yes, these stories are truly tragic. That’s why I’m not reading them.
I have no reason to read them. None. It will not improve my day. It will not make me a better friend or a parent. If I need a huge snotsob fest at work over a tragic love story to make me appreciate my children and my husband, then what kind of wife and mother was I just yesterday? Geez. I got it already. Life is precious. I have empathy, I just don’t particularly want the contents of some stranger’s soul thrust at me like a particularly unpleasant and inedible pie in the face.
Speaking of pie, imma eat a fried one real quick.
And I don’t need your gluten-free, dairy-dire, organic-ogling blog telling me I shan’t. BECAUSE I SHALL. I recently UNFRIENDED (not just blocked, not just unfollowed, not just muted but DELETED) someone I see on a regular basis because I simply could not take her brand of Organic Guilt anymore. Constant stream of consciousness rants on Facebook that quickly escalate beyond Corporate Satan Monsanto to the tiny Amish community a couple of miles away who are systematically undermining the pure ecosystem of her family’s immune systems with their refusal to comb the grass their cows eat. Damn girl, you could make soup from their goat’s fecal matter, it’s so organic, but you have an issue with their soil pH?
No one is perfect enough for these people.
How do they do it all? How do they stop using over the counter medication, and make their own essential oil potions while establishing the proper carbon footprint of geothermal heating ratio in their suburban 2-story, so they can grow their own beets and ginger while retaining enough backyard space on their .25-acre lot to let their oxen free-range all while ridding their air ducts of demon energies with a Fly Lady feather duster/exorcism kit? I don’t know. But if I cannot live up to their standard, my children will get small pox and my husband will become a gay prostitute. Or something.
… bitch
So sob story blogs and organic guilt rants are mine. What are your Immediate Internet Ignores?
