I promised you a rant on the Tide pod challenge. It is part of the reason why I have been avoiding social media. There has been quite a few people posting memes about this. I recognize gallows humor. It stopped being funny a while ago, but the memes keep happening. The kids keep doing this and dying. It sickens me to see people laughing about children dying due to social pressure. That's what's driving the Tide pod challenge and a lot of the other assinine challenges out there. Similar things went on when I was that age. It didn't spread as quickly but it was still a thing and people did stupidly dangerous things to prove they were part of the crowd.
However, those stupidly dangerous things weren't lethal. Those stupidly dangerous things weren't being broadcasted for the whole world to watch. This would be like watching a group of kids playing russian roulette with an actual firearm, not a nerf gun, and when the likes for the feed hits a critical number, they load another bullet for the lulz. I carefully monitor my children's access to the internet to keep them away from this kind of garbage because they are the kids who'd be pressured into it due to how much they want to be friends with everybody. How many other children don't have parents who are able to do this for them? What of that number have died or been severely injured due to stuff like the Tide pod challenge? I'd lay odds that a good number of the dead and injured due to this meme are ones that their parents thought that Youtube was harmless.
The Tide pod challenge isn't the only thing that bothers me about popular memes right now. There's some stupid ones out there. That's not really a problem as much of an annoyance. But the memes that make fun of people with autism or treats people with mental disability as though they are subhuman really, really bother me. They dehumanize these people. Progressive dehumanization or othering of an already vulnerable part of the population is a step towards greater oppression of said group. If it was acceptable, I'm sure that such memes would be posted about African Americans by people who seem to think that Donald Trump* is a good person based on what I've seen said by that segment of the population with respect to former President Obama.
We are living in times where Immigrations and Customs Enforcement are stopping Amtrack trains outside of Syracuse (a city that is known for salt potatoes and their basketball for the most part) and demanding to see papers proving citizenship. They're waiting at schools and places of employment to pick up potential illegal immigrants. Families are making plans for what to do if parents are picked up while kids are at school. There is an underground railroad smuggling people out of the United States to points elsewhere to seek asylum.
And yet, we should be happy with our bread and circuses. We should laugh as children are pressured to kill themselves. We should shrug off one child calling ICE on another as a prank or youthful indiscretion. (That one ended well, thank gods, the child who had ICE called on them and their family were not harassed because they had the good fortune of having all of their paperwork in hand. And the child who did that call got expelled for it.) We should look away when transgendered people are murdered for the mere offense of living. We should be hyped up about the winter olympics but not offended by the fact that school shootings are in double digits already.
If my anger and concerns about such things makes me a helicopter parent, then I'm not that fun/annoying news helicopter that's telling you about rush hour traffic. I'm the armored assault helicopter that's air support for my troops on the ground. I haven't figured out how to deal with it all yet, but if someone comes at my kids, they're going down. School yard fights happen and that is why we're teaching them how to finish a fight if it starts but to never start one. The other side of things, adults fucking around causing my children problems, I will find away to destroy them utterly. Once I thought I could count on the community to help. Now, I find my people and we fight for each other because the bonds of community have broken.
If they hadn't broken, this mess wouldn't be here. We'd be taking care of each other and nobody's babies would be dying because someone told them they had to eat poison to be popular.
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