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Happy Independence Weekend

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1. Phil Baumann RN, on July 6, 2014 at 2:15 AM said:

   The Ridicule Button

   It’s easy to goof on people on Facebook, Twitter…or any social medium – especially if the victims aren’t using these idiotic social media software.

   You can take pictures, post them, hope people make goofing comments joining you in the shared experience of ridiculing someone. Marvelous feeling, huh?

   I goof on people too from time to time – but I know the difference between having fun and violating someone’s dignity. (As a matter of fact, my writing skills can do a pretty sharp job of putting trolls into psychotherapy, but that’s a skill any web-literate person should own these days. Also? I’m too old to pay attention.)

   By ridicule, I specifically mean the unwarranted and malicious kind when a group of people taunt a victim – exaggerating and projecting their own insecurities onto the victim. It’s a mimicked form of ridicule – and social media form the perfect commons for people to imitate each other, throwing away any self-insight into their own behavior.

   Ridiculing, even passively, an old lady or man or someone who’s incapable of adding their response on Facebook makes us look cheap and stupid.

   One day we’ll all be old or sick or incapacitated somehow – and the kids will be using tech you’ll be unable to comprehend. Who knows, maybe they’ll be kinder and more discrete and sophisticated. Maybe not – maybe social media will have ruined hope for cerebral progression. Perhaps they’ll just be able to push a single button – and poof! there goes any dignity that you feel you earned in life.

   My suggestion? Use these media to leave traces of yourself that prove you’re not worthy of ridicule. If you care. (The grid is a graveyard.)

   All this data that gets copied and stored on depreciating servers scattered around the world will be all that’s left of us from here on out. And even those digital fingerprints of our haptic pecking will rot.

   Technology, more than ever, makes being less human easier and easier, faster and faster. Media, in particular, make collective shaming virtually irresistible to morons. (See what I did there?)

   If you celebrated July 4th – I mean actually contemplated what it stands for, even if in your own way – then you’ll understand why dignity is the pinnacle of civilization.

   Facebook? Not so much.

   Once dignity goes, it’s buh-bye to civilization, and howdy-doody idiocracy.

   And go fug yerself if you dare troll me here ;)

   It’s all ridiculous anyway.

   Phil Baumann RN

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