<insert adorable
picture of small children, captioned>
“If we get a thousand
‘likes’ my Daddy will get us a puppy.”
Apparently, we do not have enough parental surrogates in
place with teachers, coaches, Xbox, TV, that now we need Facebook parents. If that is not ridiculous enough, we have
Facebook enablers that ‘share’ the crap ostensibly to “help” the little
children reach their goal. YHGTBSM!!
I guess it seems harmless enough until you
really think about it. It could be argued that this is a lesson to
the youngsters on initiative or the use of social media. Pets teach children responsibility. If you would like to teach initiative, I
would suggest Elbert Hubbard’s, “A Message to Garcia.” Furthermore, it is unclear how one would
develop the social media lesson in any meaningful way. “Look, I have one thousand friends!” Probably the wrong lesson, since we consider
ourselves lucky to have a handful of extremely close and truly trustworthy
friends. “Sure, we can find a thousand
morons to respond to this.” Okay, maybe
there is some short P.T. Barnum “sucker born every minute” lesson to be derived. I just wonder if it is necessary to push
being the “sucker.” You could also teach
your children about exploiting people for little payoff by having them deal
crack on the corner. Just saying.
If we imagine
that the post is legitimate, then “Daddy” has abdicated his parenting role over
to all of us. Man, oh man! This is time to put on the twisted
grandparent persona because not only can you spoil this lot, but you do not
even have to deal with the consequences of any twisted lessons they might carry
away. Oh, and “Dad,” grow a sack! Make a decision on the damn puppy, just like
the rest of us. When the lease did not
allow pets, we explained it. When we
could have them, then we did. Even when
the veritable “farm” grows to 2 horses, a pony, two dogs, and a cat; most dads
stand up and make the call because a real father knows who will be out there on
the cold dark night the fence breaks, an animal is sick, or a myriad of other issues. Oh, and when the request came in for the
goat, a real dad took care of that one too, rather than handing it off to surrogate
Facebook dads.
In all likelihood,
however, the cute Facebook post soliciting “likes” is a business scam. Resist the urge to subjugate yourself, and
potentially your friends, to whatever information they are attempting to obtain. “Once
the pages have collected huge numbers of 'Likes', they are then sold, for cash,
to other businesses who use them to make their page appear popular…Pages with
100,000 likes can be sold for $200, according to adverts unearthed by Pearce.[1]” But hey, if you know the business, or
the person, to the extent that you know what they are using it for then go for
it, it’s your prerogative. Your Facebook
friends might prefer you not attempt to drag them down, though.
So if you are my
Facebook friend and want to scam me, do it to my face. At least be Manti Te’o’s girlfriend or
something interesting. I would suggest
the persona Fay Curry or Piehole Covére.
Avoid being the irresponsible parent that wants the rest of Facebook to
raise their children, or anybody else’s.
[1] . "Why
'Liking' Facebook virals makes scammers rich." Yahoo News. Yahoo!,
24 Oct 2012. Web. 22 Jan 2013.
<http://uk.news.yahoo.com/facebook-spam-scam-secret-revealed.html>.
