If I could pick one way that you and I would have something in common, for the sake of this blog post, I would make it be that both our souls shed a tear every time we read, “I know that only some people will be willing to do this, but post this as your status for just one hour if you [insert some way to be connected to a really well known issue society is dealing with].” I have yet to understand why posting some advocacy status about an problem that is already very, very well known by the population is going to do anything, but overload my News Feed with a list of people I need to unfriend.

The most common one I see is about cancer. I especially don’t see the purpose of posting something that says cancer is a bad thing. Nobody disagrees. Maybe if I saw somebody post a status saying, “Sad day. My boyfriend has three types of cancer and won’t even let me have one of his tumors as a pet,” I would understand that something needs to be fixed in our society’s world views. But even then, I don’t understand how a facebook status can really influence anyone. Their are two kinds of people that will read your generic facebook status about the suckiness of cancer: the people that want to comment on how much they agree with you, and the people that want to make sure it isn’t a joke before they tell facebook to stop showing your updates. That little status is going to do nothing for anybody who needs to be advocated to.

But let’s say that everybody with a facebook account posted, “Boo cancer,” all at the same time, and left it up for two hours. I honestly doubt that all of a sudden, some scientist would say, “You know, I was going to put off publishing this cure to cancer, but now, I can tell that the world does want it enough. I’ll put it in the mail today!” This isn’t like the start of a show where there’s somebody standing in front of a curtain saying, “I can’t HEEEEEEEAR YOUUUUUU! Do you really want a cure for cancer?!” Lots of people are devoting their lives and life savings to stop the spread of cancer, and a facebook status isn’t going to speed up the process. All that status does is tell the science world that it isn’t trying hard enough. Mean while, the real problem needing to be addressed is the population’s aversion to actually do something that would help people suffering from cancer (such as donate money or give blood/plasma/care packages). 

I’m not saying that people don’t have the right to want to express their opinions. I’m just saying that when people express their opinions and then ask me to agree (and share the fact that I agree with other people) in a way that implies it’s what I should do to be a good person, it is very not ok.

Although, a gray area appears when considering various situations like if Chuck Norris promised to punch out a tumor for every anti-cancer post that he got tagged in… I guess I’ll just address that when it happens.