Facebook is great for a lot of things: remembering people’s birthdays; sharing pictures of fun weekend activities; stalking former classmates, friends and attractive teaching assistants.

One thing Facebook isn’t so great for is using a status to raise awareness for a disease or problem in society. Awareness for a specific organization whose aim is to help those affected would be acceptable. But just raising awareness about a problem of which everyone already understands the severity is just patronizing.

Every other month or so, Facebook becomes overrun with default changes or status updates that are meant to call for support, action, remembrance of one cause or another. 

‘Post the color of the bra you’re wearing right now in your status to help raise awareness for breast cancer research!’

‘Post a picture of your favorite childhood cartoon character to raise awareness for Child Abuse Month.’

‘Every year 150 cats die from eating too much sugar. Copy and paste this to your status to show your support and concern for feline diabetes!’

That last one I may have exaggerated. Regardless, posting your bra color only raises my awareness of one thing. That you’re stupid because you use things like breast cancer research to rationalize telling Facebook what color bra you’re wearing — shut up. 

Is uploading a picture of Chuckie from ‘The Rugrats’ really going to inspire my Facebook friends to do anything more for a cause than upload a picture of Doug Funny or Cinderella? I suspect not. 

The most recent incident in this obnoxious trend occurred earlier this week when the following post dominated my newsfeed.  

‘Stupid cancer. We all want a new car, a new phone. A person who has cancer only wants one thing… to survive. I know that a lot of you ‘who think you’re too cool’ probably won’t re-post this, but a very little amount of my friends will. Put this on your wall in honor of someone who died of cancer, survived or who is fighting against it now.’

For starters: ‘stupid cancer’? There really isn’t a more descriptive word you could think of to illustrate how tragic a disease it is? Secondly, I’m not reposting because I think, ‘I’m too cool.’ I’m not reposting because it’s not benefitting anyone. Finally, ‘a very little amount of my friends will’ is grammatically incorrect. If you want to post something in honor of anything, the least you can do is make sure to check your grammar.

Sorry to pop your social-media bubble, but all you’re doing is clogging up my newsfeed and annoying the hell out of me. And quite frankly, you’re further demonstrating our generation’s laziness. If the people who post these things truly were concerned about child abuse or cancer or feline diabetes, then they wouldn’t be on Facebook. They’d be out doing something, like raising money or volunteering at the local cat rescue. 

I’d much prefer you post something along the lines of, ‘Just visited the local soup pantry! Spent the afternoon helping feed the homeless. It’s so heartbreaking what they have to go through, I’m thankful for the opportunity to help out. I will definitely be back tomorrow!’    

You’re still annoying, but at least you succeeded in making me feel like a lazy sack of nothing. Maybe then I would go out and do something. Probably not, but I’ll entertain the thought after seeing you’ve demonstrated an effective dedication to philanthropy. 

I’m all for awareness, but not in a Facebook status. Save them for your expressive song lyrics and obnoxious broadcasts — ‘Sunday Funday!’ 

Published on September 28, 2011 at 12:00 pm