Facebook Manipulation

I love the Internet. I really, really do. I mean, it provides an endless network of social media; it accommodates YouTube; it enables text, voice and video messaging from anywhere; and it sustains itself with ads, of which we usually only have to watch the first five seconds! It’s great! Which is why it’s a shame, a pudding-headed, nincompoopery, thrice-damned shame, that it’s the cause for a universal increase in both peer pressure and immaturity.

Time and time again, while browsing the latest in my news feed, I see a quote or photo someone’s so valiantly made the effort to share. It details a certain and very respectable cause like poverty, child abuse, abortion or the meaning of Easter, often pretending to be wise by referencing a famous entrepreneur, and catching the reader’s attention with a colourful background or graphic photo. Occasionally, and I mean very occasionally, I’ll get to about half way and think to myself, “Hmm, this one might not be so bad. I mean, it’s worded well, proof-read and so far doesn’t sound manipulative.” Yet every time, no doubt, I end up speaking too soon. And nowadays, I simply throw palm to face at each and every attempt:

The point is clear regardless of your religious beliefs. (I personally believe that Jesus was the Son of God. So if I believed Him to be a God of black mail, peer pressure and guilt trips, I might’ve obliged).

Other examples read like this:

See the bruises and cuts? This child is a victim of child abuse. If you’re legitimately against child abuse, share this photo and show that you have a heart. Only some people will share because only a few truly care.

In other words: "if you don't share this ugly picture of a child covered in bruises and cuts, it means you support child abuse."

Of course, common sense will remind you that you don't think that kid deserves to be plastered all over the net, especially when it was very likely done so without his or her consent. And logic will tell you that, before reading the text, you didn’t support child abuse; so how are you any more supportive of it now that you’ve been bombarded with a superficial and typo-infested post with false statistics?

Such posts are, fundamentally, emotionally deceptive and exploitative. They subtly coerce readers to act, to do as the post says, lest they feel guilty for essentially ignoring a genuine cause that requires but five seconds of their extensive free time (they’re procrastinating on Facebook, after all). Yet, what’s more frustrating than these posts are the people who repost them, because the posts themselves wouldn’t be reposted – they’d be useless – if people weren’t so easily swayed. This reasoning has led me to ask myself, “Why do I still have friends who do this?” I guess my undying hope is that they’ll one day move on.

Dear reader,

You’ve already read too much. But I thought you should know this anyway even though it means you’re going to die. “How am I going to die?” You ask. Tonight, when you’re asleep… a grotesque, undead creature that lives in your basement with glowing red eyes and teeth like knives; with arms that extend and latch onto you from afar, enabling its disjointed jaw to devour you piece by piece; and whose breathing – you know when it’s near – is frantic and bloodthirsty, is going to invade your bedroom. The horror of its presence will wake you, but before you die you’ll see its mangled silhouette against the filtered streetlight; and its ghoulish groans as it takes you from your bed will be the last thing you hear. That is of course unless you forward this blog post to fifty people in the next ten minutes!

Oh no – here he comes! I am but seconds too late…. I urge you… do not delay…!

Kind of like chain letters and how they get passed around – actually, exactly like chain letters. Except, instead of superstition, which humans can brush off with a personal reminder that ghosts and stuff don’t exist, the manipulative posts as discussed above seem to be far harder to avoid because they play on people’s emotions, and the causes they represent are often very real. It’s not just a light tickle of one’s morality; it’s quite brutal and direct, like a personal attack. It’s saying, “You’re a bad person if you don’t share this.” And those affected, whom I dearly hope aren’t also the ones responsible for the exponential lengthening of chain letters (because, if they are, then I have some de-friending to do), aren’t secure or mature or reasonable enough to stop and say, “Actually, I’m only sharing this out of guilt and peer pressure rather than genuine compassion or concern – and that’s not a legitimate reason.” At the end of the day, you’ve got a hundred million people who’ve shared a child abuse poster and done nothing else because they felt guilty, and fifty people who’ve donated money or a day of their lives because they actually care – and none of those fifty even saw the poster.

The Internet, while great, is plagued with these pictures and quotes. They’re fuelled by unchecked emotion, do nothing for the purpose they claim to serve, and only end up making half the world feel bad about their apathy, and the rest of us frustrated because such posts, and people, and letters about ghosts and serial killers with chainsaws as their weapons of choice, who look horrific and smell funny and only kill you while you’re in bed, with no reports having ever been recorded on such killings, exist!

I’m gullible, but not that gullible; and, thankfully, I’m emotionally stable enough not to share emotionally-manipulative Facebook crapaganda! Now, share this blog post if you're with me! (For those who still need convincing, see the letter italicised above. The clock is ticking).