What is with these people on Facebook who have to put, “Keep a tissue handy, I’m still in TEARS,” thinking they will entice you to read their piece? Or the other hyperbole-wranglers who cry, “This is hysterical!” when it’s patently not. Why can’t more people be impeccable with their words and, to quote Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat, “Say what you mean and mean what you say.”
“No one saw THIS coming!” is another false claim to get you to watch their video which invariably shows something quite normal and not all that unexpected taking place and could be pretty much predicted by a child. While we’re on the subject, if you have a loved one serving in the military and you’re invited out onto the ice at a hockey game, or onto the field at a baseball/football game, chances are pretty good said loved one will come up behind you dressed as the team mascot to surprise you because they got home a few weeks early. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for reuniting families with loved ones (especially those who had been in potentially dangerous locales) and can get as sappy and teary eyed as the next person, but would appreciate not being patronized with hyperbole and false claims.
When a headline on Facebook or Twitter contains the words obliterates, devastates, destroys, etc., I’m guessing none of those things happened and will make a mental note to avoid that poster.
Another beef with some social media posters – and they’re generally of the female persuasion – why must they feel the compunction to share with us their glee each time their ‘hubs’ or ‘DH’ (dear husband) brings them a cup of coffee, tea, wine, chocolate, etc.? We get it. You’ve got a husband (allegedly) who dotes on you (allegedly) and you’re delighted with that fact (alleged fact). Notice that men manage to refrain from that form of bragging. I can’t recall seeing, “The wife just brought me a [fill in the blank] beer, coffee, beef jerky.” [God knows they can and do brag about plenty of other things that are just as boring, but rarely the aforementioned doting spouse trope.]
The penultimate social media oversharer is the tweeter or FBer who feels the need to keep their friends/followers up to date on their every move. The ones on vacation truly mystify and irk me.
“Here we are on the [fill in the blank: plane, train, boat, cruise ship, catamaran, International Space Station – now, the latter would admittedly be impressive, but still].”
“Here we are arriving in [fill in the blank: Vegas, Maine, London, Paris, the Mekong Delta, Tahiti.”
“Here we are [fill in the blank: water skiing, hang gliding, zip lining, bungee jumping, wrestling rabid wildebeests, playing volley ball on a nude beach.”
Wherever you’ve gone, whatever you’re doing there, and with whomever you’ve gone there with – we don’t care. Honestly. Go. Have fun. Enjoy. Tell us about it when you get back. We really don’t need a blow-by-blow description of your travels. Seriously. How about you live in the moment and experience your own vacation while it’s happening? While we’re relieved not to have to sit and watch a hundred slides of your trip as in days of yore, likewise, we do not want to see multi images of you on social media wrestling rabid wildebeests on the International Space Station.
One final complaint. [It’s my birthday, I’m allowed.]
I think a brief revisit is in order re: the excessive overuse of the word hero. [You know my feelings on this.] According to social media, as well as the regular media, nearly everyone and their granny is a hero. A cop who helps little baby ducklings from a rain grate and reunites them with their anxious mother does not a hero make. If said officer climbed down into a putrid alligator-infested sewer pit to rescue the fluffy little critters, that’d be a different story.
And while it’s more than commendable for children to fork over their lemonade stand profits to a charity or worthy cause, this act alone does not constitute the stature of hero. They are good deed doers who will hopefully carry that generosity of heart with them throughout the remainder of their lives. There is a vast difference between making of monetary donation to a cause you endorse and diving on a live grenade to save your colleagues, or entering a burning building to rescue a person or animal, especially if they are strangers.
It’s exhibiting courage and bravery, risking life and limb, to save someone else – be they human or animal – that makes a hero, not just someone who has done ‘the right thing’. It’s a sad state of affairs that too few people are ‘doing the right thing’, so that when someone does, they are elevated to hero status.
Watch this space – where next time we’ll chat about the 1960 Pulitzer Prize winning novel ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ which I feel was highly overrated, and why its sequel ‘Go Set a Watchman’(which was actually written first but lay hidden for 55 years beneath some other papers in a safe deposit box, allegedly), and portends to depict Atticus Finch* not as an open-minded caring person, but as a racist who has attended a KKK meeting and rails against desegregation. At a time when so many racial atrocities are happening it could appear to some that author Harper Lee and her ‘people’ have decided to release this second volume now feeling it could be quite profitable.
One can only have concern for the 89-year old Ms. Lee who, by all appearances, seemed content to live a quiet life off the royalties of her first (and until now, her only) book. Word has it she lived rather simply, even frugally by the looks of her self-inflicted haircut. It gives one pause to hear Ms. Lee’s attorney and trustee of her estate, Tonja Carter, hint there may even be a third recently uncovered novel bridging the two. Can I get an Amen and a Halleluiah?
“No one saw THIS coming!” is another false claim to get you to watch their video which invariably shows something quite normal and not all that unexpected taking place and could be pretty much predicted by a child. While we’re on the subject, if you have a loved one serving in the military and you’re invited out onto the ice at a hockey game, or onto the field at a baseball/football game, chances are pretty good said loved one will come up behind you dressed as the team mascot to surprise you because they got home a few weeks early. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for reuniting families with loved ones (especially those who had been in potentially dangerous locales) and can get as sappy and teary eyed as the next person, but would appreciate not being patronized with hyperbole and false claims.
When a headline on Facebook or Twitter contains the words obliterates, devastates, destroys, etc., I’m guessing none of those things happened and will make a mental note to avoid that poster.
Another beef with some social media posters – and they’re generally of the female persuasion – why must they feel the compunction to share with us their glee each time their ‘hubs’ or ‘DH’ (dear husband) brings them a cup of coffee, tea, wine, chocolate, etc.? We get it. You’ve got a husband (allegedly) who dotes on you (allegedly) and you’re delighted with that fact (alleged fact). Notice that men manage to refrain from that form of bragging. I can’t recall seeing, “The wife just brought me a [fill in the blank] beer, coffee, beef jerky.” [God knows they can and do brag about plenty of other things that are just as boring, but rarely the aforementioned doting spouse trope.]
The penultimate social media oversharer is the tweeter or FBer who feels the need to keep their friends/followers up to date on their every move. The ones on vacation truly mystify and irk me.
“Here we are on the [fill in the blank: plane, train, boat, cruise ship, catamaran, International Space Station – now, the latter would admittedly be impressive, but still].”
“Here we are arriving in [fill in the blank: Vegas, Maine, London, Paris, the Mekong Delta, Tahiti.”
“Here we are [fill in the blank: water skiing, hang gliding, zip lining, bungee jumping, wrestling rabid wildebeests, playing volley ball on a nude beach.”
Wherever you’ve gone, whatever you’re doing there, and with whomever you’ve gone there with – we don’t care. Honestly. Go. Have fun. Enjoy. Tell us about it when you get back. We really don’t need a blow-by-blow description of your travels. Seriously. How about you live in the moment and experience your own vacation while it’s happening? While we’re relieved not to have to sit and watch a hundred slides of your trip as in days of yore, likewise, we do not want to see multi images of you on social media wrestling rabid wildebeests on the International Space Station.
One final complaint. [It’s my birthday, I’m allowed.]
I think a brief revisit is in order re: the excessive overuse of the word hero. [You know my feelings on this.] According to social media, as well as the regular media, nearly everyone and their granny is a hero. A cop who helps little baby ducklings from a rain grate and reunites them with their anxious mother does not a hero make. If said officer climbed down into a putrid alligator-infested sewer pit to rescue the fluffy little critters, that’d be a different story.
And while it’s more than commendable for children to fork over their lemonade stand profits to a charity or worthy cause, this act alone does not constitute the stature of hero. They are good deed doers who will hopefully carry that generosity of heart with them throughout the remainder of their lives. There is a vast difference between making of monetary donation to a cause you endorse and diving on a live grenade to save your colleagues, or entering a burning building to rescue a person or animal, especially if they are strangers.
It’s exhibiting courage and bravery, risking life and limb, to save someone else – be they human or animal – that makes a hero, not just someone who has done ‘the right thing’. It’s a sad state of affairs that too few people are ‘doing the right thing’, so that when someone does, they are elevated to hero status.
Watch this space – where next time we’ll chat about the 1960 Pulitzer Prize winning novel ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ which I feel was highly overrated, and why its sequel ‘Go Set a Watchman’(which was actually written first but lay hidden for 55 years beneath some other papers in a safe deposit box, allegedly), and portends to depict Atticus Finch* not as an open-minded caring person, but as a racist who has attended a KKK meeting and rails against desegregation. At a time when so many racial atrocities are happening it could appear to some that author Harper Lee and her ‘people’ have decided to release this second volume now feeling it could be quite profitable.
One can only have concern for the 89-year old Ms. Lee who, by all appearances, seemed content to live a quiet life off the royalties of her first (and until now, her only) book. Word has it she lived rather simply, even frugally by the looks of her self-inflicted haircut. It gives one pause to hear Ms. Lee’s attorney and trustee of her estate, Tonja Carter, hint there may even be a third recently uncovered novel bridging the two. Can I get an Amen and a Halleluiah?
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