The Ire In Irony

Someone posts a video of themselves doing something stupid, entitled, wasteful, and repulsive enough to be embarrassing for all of humankind. We share it to tell people just how disgusted we are by it, and we laugh the laughs of subconscious desperation. The person who posted it gets a million more views because of our shares, and they are paid for those views by advertisers and social media channels.

We have just participated in furthering the stupidity of our culture. We need to stop sharing, reacting, and commenting on things we hate, no matter how much our blood boils. It’s up to us to stop perpetuating this trash, to not give these idiots a voice or a platform or more of the new most powerful monetary unit, views. We need to remove ourselves from this equation, from being part of the problem. If everyone did it for six months, these horrible videos would no longer be profitable, and they would stop. 

“And America wonders why people hate us. These assholes just wasted sixty dollars on Candy and soda or Spaghetti and meatballs so they could get a few views on YouTube. We really need to stop sharing stuff like this and start thinking about how sick these people really are and how much we are enabling them by sharing it.”

-Me ranting like a stubborn old man yelling at children on his lawn to my poor significant other.

18 Comments

  1. It is hard not to laugh and send some of them along, but I see your reasoning, and I agree. I do not forward or re-post them, but I am afraid I am in a small minority. I don’t have time. I am always working on something. I am trying to figure out how to get my podcasts on Facebook like yours above. I will figure it out, but it would be nice if Anchor had a good track to run on. Their help chat was not a lot of help. This is a great post and much needed. You did a great job in recording it. Thanks for posting.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. Thanks so much. If you have a page (not a profile but a page) you need to open Facebook and go to the page and be sure to act as the page not your personal profile. Then you’ll see a button that says “Manage” with a little screwdriver and wrench next to it. Click on that. In the lefthand column, you see “Podcasts” in your tools. Click that. Then add your RSS feed for your podcast there. Your FB page will pull the new episodes as they are published. The issue isn’t really Anchor. You can also share them from spotify using the share function so long as your accounts are connected to Facebook. To add the player to blog posts you just need to choose the Spotify embed block then paste the link from the podcast episode in the field. If you have questions let me know. Maybe I can help. As for this post, yeah, the big thing is that commenting and putting angry face reactions on things just pushes the post back up into peoples feeds. It helps more people see it and creates a snowball effect. I always find it sad when stupid things go viral, it’s a true reflection of our society.

      Liked by 1 person

  2. I never thought about sharing ignorant things until I read this post. You make a very good point, but people are so addicted to social media—to some, it’s their life—that I don’t see it happening. Also, so many people are so crass and vulgar anymore they see nothing wrong with the garbage they take in.

    Liked by 2 people

  3. An excellent observation. More than once I have gone off on a rant of similar ilk. Truth of the matter is that our society is so sick, there is no chance in hell of any number of people seeing what trash this is and refusing to be party to its propagation. People want so desperately to “belong” they follow every insane fashion trend – a no small cost – and clamor to be part of the lunacy, to steal in some perverse way, a bit of notoriety for themselves. The California girl with her nasal nonsensical twang, blue hair and pierced lips, the boy from the hood with his pants exposing his ugly ass as his trou drop to his untied $400 tennis shoes, the corporate climber going into hock up to his eyeballs to drive the proper luxury auto.

    This “like” society, this “me” society, this “entitled” society is inside out. I have begun to make changes personally. Have you? Good thought provoker. Thank you.

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