Chain letter forwards - don't just stop sending them to "me," please please stop sending/re-sharing them to anyone, period! They're mostly bogus and unoriginal, and just keep going and going around and around, and they're lazy.
A lot of them are plain evil, the sick kid hoaxes and slander pieces about famous people.
others are just annoying and a lot of them you have to wonder "How the heck did my friend fall for this!?"
I have something to say about other people who complain about memes too, and why I don't hang with them either. More on that later, but you will see why I just don't fit in anywhere.
Memes!
They are spam. They are chain letter spam.
They started out as forwarded emails, and have taken social networks by storm, in the form of way overused catchphrases, hashtags, goofy pictures with stupid little captions that are supposedly funny, but after seeing the zillionth re-share from some contact/friend, just argh!
They are the over-shared pages *cough* Huffington, Buzzfeed, Ughworthy, Elite Daily, any reality, talk, or late night comedy show, viral videos and other viral web links, Minions quotes, "Tasty's", "I Calls It Like I Sees It", "Shut Up I'm Still Talking", any variation on "Life Lessons Learned", the dreaded Nametests.com and meaww.com quiz apps that are FB login dependent and re-shared into the next galaxy and back again!
The old email forward is still around, only it has migrated to social networks in the form of pseudo-inspirational, more like sappy re-shared statuses, hoaxes, stale old jokes that used to fly around by email.
Fiction is fine when it is clear that is what it is. When you open a fiction book, you know right away that is what you're getting. It doesn't pretend to be anything else..
Many memes don't make that distinction, deliberately. They are fiction dressed up to look like reality or a goofy facsimile thereof. That's called lies. Some of these lies are especially heinous when it comes to political memes or calls to boycott some company or person.
The prevailing myth from the Trump-bashers that has "Make America White/Hate Again" Trump never said he wanted a whiter America...
Then there's the especially irritating reactions from society as memes with a conservative bent get spread, then ridiculed as "chain letters" or "whisper campaigns" by liberals, while memes with a liberal bent get re-shared and re-shared without the same criticism because their memes are always considered tres cool! Like how dare anyone make a joke about the Obamas? Surely that's some kind of sacrilege or racism or something, and after all, when he was US pres', well, it just weren't cool to say not in to make light of him, oh, no!
The Racist Rush Limbaugh List meme is also malicious and bogus. Snopes, now a leftist publication, never bothered to label it as false, when it should have. Snopes went to much greater lengths to protect the Obamas from any negative words floating around about them.
By some miscalculation and plan backfiring on the liberal establishment, Trump got in, and now it's da coolest thing to ridicule the US president 24/7, whether it's on TV or via social network joke or trite memes!
Aaaaaaaagh!
Yes, I am a Christian, so what I'm about to say may shock you.
I got a lot to get off my chest about memes that misuse and twist religious references, so this is long.
Prayer memes - no thanks! You could be praying for someone who actually doesn't exist. Furthermore, I don't, and you don't need memes telling you/me who and what to pray for, how, and when. And no, a prayer isn't more powerful if you hit the forward/share button immediately after reciting a prayer written out in a chain letter..
Stories in memes, no thanks. Many are designed to make you sad or at least make you cry. Many aren't true, some are, and others can't be verified. Some attribute events falsely to certain people, or the author is simply stripped of credit. However you slice it, they all get under my skin.
Some of the worst religious memes, and unfortunately there are a lot of them, claim that in order to save Christianity and stand up for God and show what a good Christian you are, you must *pass on the meme!* Not actually just be a Christian and a good friend, but re-share that meme!
A typical example of a social network religious meme:
"Let’s give the Devil a Stroke & Heart Attack by typing “I am a Child of God”!"
AAAAAAGh!
1. This is a call to spam the net and make everyone put the same message on their profiles. It's a chain letter, a meme, that is all! It is not some super-weapon against Satan...
2. You will never kill the devil with memes. God will be the one to destroy the devil.
3. Stop acknowledging the devil, which is exactly what this meme is doing. You're supposed to ignore/resist him instead.
4. Stop and think when you see a meme like that. Does it even look all that grownup to you, or more like a little kindergarten-level Sunday school lesson? If the latter, you are re-sharing something that actually talks down to the adult population and makes you look, how to put this? Simple-minded. There are scads of feel-good and "religious" memes like that and it makes me furious seeing my friends/contacts/fellow netizens let themselves get ruled by these trite pieces of fluffy spam. Come on! You wouldn't just let some other adult come up to you and start condescending to you as if you were some little kid, the way these memes do. Don't take it from anonymous ne'er-do-wells even if it's clear they got the better of your friend who has already re-shared the meme!
5. Have you not even considered for a second this and other memes like it were actually created by anti-Christians at our expense? They make up these childish memes with religious themes to see how many Christians they can get to spam the net with their memes, then they sit back and go "Hahaha! Look at the spamming Christians and their chain posts again!" I've seen more than I ever care to of people turning Christians into the butt of their jokes with these memes, then using it as an excuse to whine on and on against Christianity rather than the spread of memes in general.
Another dirty mind-game these memes play is emotional abuse, playing on fear and guilt. They coercively claim 'if you don't pass it on, you must be ashamed of God, so God is ashamed of you'.
There's nothing remotely Christian about those tactics. This is cyber-bullying and blackmail. It's exactly the same as the meme that calls you heartless, lazy, or selfish if you don't pass it along to all your friends so that 2 cents can go to fight some fictional kid's disease and keep them alive.
Nothing, not even Christianity is sacred to trolls sick enough to fabricate dying kid hoaxes and steal pictures from people's online galleries to make the hoax appear real. If they are capable of doing that, they are capable of making up "Christian" memes too.
When you re-share these memes and do what they tell you, you're no longer an individual. You have become subservient to anonymous internet trolls, not to God, and you are not actually helping any dying kid by re-sharing a meme that says how much you love God or children...
Hoaxers who make up memes that play on our emotions to get us passing their junk along are scum.
Then there are the happier religious tales of some miracle or other. These are not quite so bad if they're true, and as long as the original authors specifically grant permission to pass them along. However, once they become memes, they get mired down into the rest of the lot, and that is no way to treat something real. And, frankly, it is no fun getting the same story or cute/amazing viral video or great animation and powerpoint thing 4 times within 8 days because it's trending and everyone from friends to email list members bloggers, social network denizens, and web forum members are totally wowed by it.
Religious memes make me go particularly ballistic, you do not want to talk to me after sending/sharing a religious meme with a bogus story and false prayer and guilt-tripping. Because I'd like to throttle anybody who re-shares these fraudulent and blasphemous/sacreligious things.
I've left chat communities that were getting ruined by memes. One of these used to be a lot of fun until the owner decided it would be a *cough* "Christian" *cough* email list. And what that really meant was a list where she and others started posting religious memes, including hoaxes and spammy campaigns!
One particularly offensive meme of this type posted to that list, urged all Christians to mailbomb the ACLU (the anti-Christ of the religious chain letter realm apparently) with Christmas cards in order to shut down their operation. Oh, and not just any Christmas card, they have to have scripture verses or Christian references and pictures of the Nativity, no snowmen, Santa (He's actually Satan yknow) etc.
Obviously I didn't send the twit the stack I blew in my head at him for the better part of an hour. This is *NOT* what a Christian list should be engaging in!
when I made a request to the list management to put a stop to the memes, she flatly refused, which only infuriated me even more. So I quit the list to spare myself from possible further upset of that sort coming from there. If I had stayed, it would've been only a matter of time before I exploded at someone for posting yet another stupid meme.
Before that chat list got turned into a place for people to indulge their addiction to memes, it used to be full of lively, friendly, real email notes back and forth, where anyone could start up and chip into any conversation.
The memes killed all of that!
I seem to be one of very few Christians who immediately question and suspect all memes, and who honestly and so openly dislike them, especially any that lie about anyone and anything, misquote people and quote them out of context, use guilt-tripping and utterly false stories, use fake flattery and promises, ridiculous curses and threats, and exploits people's religious beliefs just to get them passing it on, true or not. I see them for what they really are, misguided at best, utter bunk at worst. And these do cause anti-Christian backlash, instead of bringing more people to Christ.
And this brings me to another thing that irritates the living crap out of me.
People who get outraged at all the re-shares...
AAAAAAAAAAAGGHH!
I WANT MORE CHRISTIAN POLITICALLY NON-LEFT SPEAKING OUT AGAINST MEME CULTURE!!
Is that clear enough?
It also needs to be widely recognized and acknowledged that memes are every bit as much of a liberal problem in the Trump term.
In 2016, it ended up a toss up between Hillary and Trump as head of the US super power, and after the eight-year-long societal nightmare of the social justice warriors ramming their identity politics down everyone's throats with impunity during the Obama years, enough Americans were sick of it and scared enough of that nightmare continuing into overdrive with a Hillary win that they chose the lesser of the two dangers and voted Trump.
And then all heck broke loose as the left, finally not getting their own way after 8 long years, threw massive and sometimes violent tantrums.
9 Deadliest/most violent Trump-hater attacks
Conservatives/republicans thankfully didn't become unhinged when Obama won his two terms. But that didn't stop liberals from going batcrap crazy "fact-checking" every "far-right chain email" they could find and in at least some cases, actually make up and loose on the net as a prank on conservatives...
Then when Trump got in, memes became totally cool from the Trump-basher side, while still being ridiculed as "Pants on fire" "Whisper campaigns" "echo chamber" "chain letters" coming from "sheeple" republicans who were not bashing Trump.
Hypocrites!
Newsflash: Memes are memes!
This is about memes and not so much about Trump, but I'm going to point out one thing nobody seems to realize... Trump wouldn't be getting all this slag if he was a democrat. The real reason he is hated so much is because he ran as a republican. I never liked him, not even back when everyone thought he was some kind of cool rich badarse boss guy. I still don't. Loud-mouthed, overbearing, overconfident swaggering guys are seriously annoying, and then when they have their own fandoms, it only ads to the irritation. But Trump
's fandom has decreased significantly since he ran as a republican, and that would n't have happened if he ran as a democrat, the party with all the anti-western, anti-Christian, identity politics.
Trump doesn't promote the identity politics that are the root of society's hatreds, and is no worse than the Kennedys and for sure the Clintons for sexual indiscretions.
So basically if it's viral, just don't send/share it, period.Also, just because a forward shouts "This is a true story!" does not mean it is! You've seen other spam that shouts "This is not spam!" right? Well, the same applies to chain letters. Chances are if it shouts out "This is not a chain letter!" or "This is a true story!" it is a chain letter and very likely it is an untrue or at least partially untrue story. So, before passing them on, it's always a good idea to validate them first. A quick trip to one of sites and keying in a few words that appear in the story somewhere, should bring up some results.
But the trouble is, most people who share this stuff couldn't be bothered - it's just easier to hit that forward/share button! And once again, if I get it, I have to do the work for them and let them know if the story was bunk. Argh! I usually don't reply to these if they are true, because really, what is there to say?
I used to have a good friend - until she got on the net. She, like so many others, got addicted to chain letters and she abandoned me in favor of sending these memes to other people.
When her re-shares weren't getting her the warm fuzzies from me she expected, she said she wasn't going to send "me" any more forwards - and it's like, sheesh, that's not the point! Stop with the memes, PERIOD!
Another person sent me a chain letter joke. She's a hot-head already, and got really hissy when I sent back a reply pointing her to a page that archived and debunked the chain. She got mad, pitched a fit at me and hasn't sent me a personal/private email since. She can go fly a kite if that's her attitude!
Another person who habitually sent memes to everybody in her contact list but me, accidentally sent me one. Argh! Then she sent me another letter, apologizing for sending the meme to my address by mistake. Double argh! I didn't write back, too upset to do so! What should I say? "That's okay." It's not okay! The truth about how this made me feel? No, there really isn't a gentler way of putting it and it would for sure hurt her feelings and then I'd be the villain yet again. Do nothing? Oh sure, and keep it all in, not healthy. It's got to come out somewhere.
I have feelings too, and I get pretty hurt when I find out that people have been ignoring me because they would rather share anonymous memes with others who aren't as likely to object or caution against it.
Sending/posting a meme is not going to determine "who reads your email/looks at your profile" or make you a better friend etc. If the chain letter has some claim in it such as re-sharing it will get you more friends and not sharing it will bring you bad luck, or that you'll be a better friend or Christian or whatever by passing on a piece of bogus junk that's been all over the net, how do you think that makes me feel, getting this from you? What sort of friend re-shares bullying cyber curses that tell you to pass them on to x number of people or to all your contacts or else? Not a real friend, or at least not one who thinks! It's idiotic, inconsiderate and rude!
How do you think it makes me feel to see re-shares or personally receive all these sappy "friendship" memes with sickly smarmy stories or poems that are designed to tear-jerk, and preachy essays on what it means to be a friend, to have a friend, and how caring and sharing and loving and hugging is the only way to be and how you or I could die tomorrow, leaving the one left living to regret for the rest of their life that they didn't say those three little words via meme blast? And here's the kicker - that's the only time some of you people can even be bothered to give me a second's worth of thought, and even then it isn't really a thought, I've become just another number on your list of "friends" to see you've just re-shared more of these stupid memes!?
Don't you people realize that the whole point of these emotional-yankers is to soften you up so you can't think for yourselves, and then you will just re-share! Because that is the real goal of all chain letters AKA memes! And you are all being used as cogs to keep the virals circulating! That's what memes are.
I don't need to be preached at by some generic meme that's been re-shared around a million times by a million different people, and that I've gotten a number of times from 6 different friends, especially when they go on and on about what friendship is and how to be a friend. I don't want stories that are designed to put a downer into my day, or make me go "Ooooooohhhh! Aaaaaaaaawwwwwwweeee!" I don't even want true stories that have some sort of agenda twist tacked on to them to manipulate people into re-sharing out of outrage or manufactured amazement or anything at all! And that goes Especially if they can't even be verified, or worse, they are out and out false.
I know what friends are, I know what hugs and kisses are. I know what love is, and you better believe me, it does not come from memes!
You can't save your friends from criminals, the flu or anything else by spreading memes. You won't get money or a free laptop by sending out forwards to any number of people! A lot of the so-called facts in trivia and quote memes are actually not true, and falsely attributed to people who never said or wrote what the meme claims they did.
Come on, you must surely know better than that! So why do you keep re-sharing this junk? It's annoying and embarrassing!
I'm not asking you to stop writing me, just the opposite, in fact. I want to make that clear. What I'd like you to do is stop ignoring and abandoning me, and tossing me aside in favor of re-sharing stupid meme junk to everyone else just because maybe most aren't as vocal about it as I am, or because they actually like getting this junk - after all, you must have liked it in order to re-share it, why is completely beyond me!
But you can be sure I'll read your notes and give you much friendship and gratitude if you write me your own words - or even send something else you've found on the net that is not some viral.
I'm sick of you people letting yourselves get pushed around by memes, and yes, that's exactly what it is! You all have absolutely no problem declining a real request in person or even in an actual email I have written. You have no problem telling me you can't talk, or you can't go out for coffee with me, or you have to take a raincheck on some get-together because something pressing has come up. But my gosh, you just don't have the spine to say "NO!" to memes!
Something else way too many of you do is assume that because we're starting to write each other, that it's okay to re-share the memes, that you somehow think that's keeping in touch. Well, it isn't! If you ever wonder why I don't comment on your social network posts, write you any more and I've stopped replying to emails you send/post, it's because you've gone meme-addicted! Sometimes I can reply with a site to debunk the meme, but I'll rarely make comments other than discourage forwarding/re-sharing activity of this crap. Other times I just don't reply at all because there wasn't an entry dealing with the particular meme on hoax-debunking sites, the love/luck and friendship meme are so numerous in their mutations that even though they are manipulative bullcrap, there are just too many for every site to debunk individually. You have no idea how upset I am with you when I get these! Too upset to be civil!
What everyone who has ever done this to me owes an apology for is their unfeeling act of abandoning me as a friend in favor of spamming their other contacts with memes in any and all forms, whether it's email, wall post, social network re-share, or even text messages, if I actually used that feature on my cell phone. You may not even realize that's what you've done, but it is, and it hurts! Do anonymously created memes mean that much more to you than my friendship!?
I'd just like people to stop ditching me in favor of re-sharing the memes to everyone else instead. I'd also like people to use a little common sense, and listen to cautions against spreading memes, and take those cautions to heart.
Do you honestly think I'm convinced that you care all that much about me when all I ever see from you is memes, everything from viral jokes to alarmist/political warnings/petitions to "factoids and quotes" that are very likely in reality misquotes and not facts, pics of sicky cute but obviously photoshopped animals doing crazy cutesy things, videos that are being circulated all over the place that didn't actually come from you, but from a friend of a friend of a friend, to gushy friendship memes that you didn't write, and that I have seen posted on countless other places on the net? Gads, why not just send a TV commercial, it comes out to about the same thing! Seriously, people, think, please, think!
Internet newbies still have a lot to learn, so they are going to get sucked into spreading memes once in a while. Especially when the meme appears at a glance to be personally written by the friend they saw re-posting it. This happens when the meme is written in first person.
But there comes a time when you should know better.
When people get that mentality "Avoid sending forwards to *this person*" it almost always really means "forget about this person and just go on spamming everyone else in your contacts with the memes. Abandon anyone else who dares to set the record straight on a bogus chain or simply protests at getting any from you. Blacklist them from your contacts and just forget about them so they don't make you feel like a fool and you can just go on having your fun! Your ego is more important than their friendship and what's real!"
"Send this on to 1 friend and your crush will call you, send it to 25 people and you will marry your true love in a month. "Pass this on and you'll have good luck for a year. Delete it and you'll have bad luck for 7 years." "Delete this if we are not friends" "I want this back, then I'll know you're my friend!" "Let's see if you read my emails, now pass it on and see who else reads your emails!" "Forward this friendship thingie and spread the friendship!" "Forward and see who has a crush on you/who looks at your profile!" or one of the most laughable "Forward to x number of people and a cool video will pop up!" Who makes up and who believes this hooey? "
So, the next time a meme barges onto your screen, stop and think. Don't hit that re-share button.
You need to ask yourselves some hard questions.
Why re-share memes?
Do you really think some anonymous fluffy spam is more interesting than you are?
Do you really believe you are doing your friends/contacts/fellow forum members a big favor?
Do you actually think you're the only one who's ever received it? Do you think it's so special and so scarce that you must pass it on to your friends to insure they are blessed to get something that's a once in a life time thing? Do you not realize this is a huge con?
Have you checked on your favourite search engine to find out if there are already a zillion re-posts of the latest thing to grab your attention and give you the overwhelming urge to re-share? You should. Because memes, especially joke and viral video re-shares tend to crop up more than once in any given email box or social network newsfeed by eager re-sharers...
Do you think your friend wrote it and believes everything in it?
Do you really think re-sharing shows them how much you so incredibly care?
Do you think a canned message is more valuable to your friends than anything you personally have to say?
Are you really interested in keeping up friendships or are you just interested in getting ego-strokes from people who you think will like the meme as much as you did and reply back with what a great great post they think you shared and what a wonderful person you are for passing it along?
Do you really think your friends will comment more if you post memes instead of writing your own posts or at least sending them something that didn't come in a viral?
Do you really believe every friendship meme that comes along, including those that claim you are the one true most special friend of the person who re-shared it, even though they actually have a Cc: list a mile long and the one who sent it to them has a Cc: list 10 miles long?, or that same meme keeps cropping up on scads of other people's social network statuses? How personal is that?
Do you think your friends need reminders via meme of what a friend is, what a smile is, what a hug, kiss, or love is, and do you really believe you are spreading the love by passing the meme along to your contacts and fellow forum members?
Do you really believe you are showing a great deal of consideration to people who just want real communication and friendship without memes, by neglecting to email or communicate with them because you're too busy spamming up email/forums/blogs/social networks with the latest meme to grab you by your emotions, including the funnybone?
WRONG!
Think about it. If all you ever get from someone is chain letters, does that make you feel cared about? How much effort does it take to hit the blasted re-post/re-share/reblog button anyway!?
How would you feel if you found out your "friends" were either too lazy or just couldn't be bothered to send you even a short "Hi, how's it going, here's what I've been up to lately" type note, but they spend most of their online time re-sharing memes and gabbing to other people who praised those memes? Is that any way to be a friend?
And this is a big part of why "friendship" memes are so galling. They're a sham and they don't actually make friendships stronger.
I am quite a chatty person who loves getting notes, replying back, I'd love it muchly if people would post more notes on my social network timeline/wall/profiles, my forums, send me email, web sites they like and/or they think I might like, (not from fwd emails though) even recipes and media from their own collection (not from forwards they got from friends of friends of contacts.) I want the real thing, not chain letters trying to play substitute for communication and friendship, and I'm fed up to the back teeth with being ignored because people would rather just spread memes even though they gotta know a lot of it's fake!
For the love of your friends, your own reputation, and of all things good, please stop with the blasted memes!
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