What if, instead of thoughts of positive energy and prayers for jesusly intercession, we could make a bad situation better by constantly feeling guilty and afraid? Wait, neither one works? While we rightfully mock right wingers for thoughts & prayers, there’s a lefty version of the same idea which is that if you aren’t feeling terrible, you aren’t doing things right.
Reddit used to be very nazi, but in the wake of a few noteworthy purges, has swung left – some liberals, some commies. Sounds like a good time, right? Not so much. Something in the way upvoting works, the way the site is structured, lends itself to social snowballs. This could be dogpiling harassment, but more often is blithering panic. A news report comes that North Korea is playing around with nukes. People talk to each other on reddit about it for about twenty minutes and become convinced the bombs are about to fall, immediately jump on the phone and say tearful goodbyes to loved ones on the west coast.
How’s that helping anything? Be real. Think about it for even a second. NK would only launch nukes if its leaders were feeling suicidal. Why would they want to die? They’re the god emperors of Sadland. Being god is pretty cool. Now, in addition to making everybody in your subreddit feel terrible for no reason, you’ve reached out to your innocent relatives and possibly made them feel worse too. Let’s model our behavior on ghost curses, that’d be cool.
If somebody on the internet says, in a calm but concerned tone, “I am feeling scared about this thing,” some leering poison-dripping ghoul will slither out of an ichorous oubliette to say, in a Ren Hoek voice, “You feel bad, huh? You should feel worse. You should be shitting your pants. You should be planning your suicide.” I’ve said before that conservatives have based all of their modern positions on cowardice, greed, and disgust, but some liberals sure like to rival them on all counts.
I mentioned before liberals saying they watched the New Zealand mosque shooter’s video because they felt like they had to. They literally did what the shooter wanted them to do, turning it around in their head so that was honoring the victims or something? Self-harm to magic something positive into the world. It very obviously doesn’t work.
Instead of Thoughts & Prayers, we could call it Laments & Sorrows. “If it makes you feel any better, well, I feel pretty bad about your situation. Mighty sad, that.” There’s a human instinct that our emotions, if strong enough, can have a tangible effect on the world. If we’re not all feeling miserable constantly, we have failed, because our collective sorrow has a magical power. But only if we all do our part, so join in the shit pit! Liberal prayer warriors, start feeling bad about stuff now!
I get that the main thing people are mocking in Thoughts & Prayers is that the scumbags offering them really do have the power to contribute to change that will prevent the evils in question, but the money from Big Evil is too good. It’s basic and transparently motivated hypocrisy, and that’s not what I want people to get out of my comparison to liberal Laments & Sorrows. Most of the people doing this are near powerless to make significant change happen, especially in terms of legislation, global politics, the whims of the rich. That’s all the more reason to stop doing it.
One can try to be informed about the things one feels one should know, treat serious subjects with the gravity they deserve, without having to harm yourself. If you’re too easily overwhelmed and can’t deal with bad news, then maybe you, personally, should be less informed and less engaged. You can help somebody closer to home, feed a bird, water a plant.
Not everyone has to or can body-block genocide. Your pain will not heal anyone or make anything better. Do what you can, do your best not to obsess about the rest. That is all.
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