It Is Time

Many of you are familiar with the website that shows shoppers of a particular chain discount store, (I am not mentioning the website by name because I have no intentions of promoting it, you will understand why as you read further.) That website is a good indication of what is wrong in the world. No, not the people who are shown in the pictures or videos but the people who take them and the people who partake in laughing at them.

You know what the difference between that, or a video on youtube of someone falling or doing something not so bright and America's Funniest Videos?  Do you?  The people in the AFV video are typically family or friends who know the video is being submitted. The other websites and such are taken by complete strangers and put up without the permission of those being objectified.  (Objectified: To treat someone as an object rather than a person)
It's not funny to me. And before you go on a tangent how I think I am better than everyone else, isn't that what people are doing by putting these things on the internet?

Adults complain about "kids these days don't know how to interact, they are always on their phones"! Guess what?  SO ARE YOU!? What's worse is you don't see it! And to compound the problem, you don't see what you are teaching the next generations.

Let me give another example:
I was walking with some friends through a parking lot, my boot got caught and I went down. One minute I was standing having a conversation with them and the next I was flat on the parking lot and they were looking around as though "Where'd she go!?" Of course, when then found me on the ground (without blood streaming or any broken parts) they laughed. Hard. We all laughed. It hurt. My knee was badly bruised but we all laughed.  The difference between that and if someone had taken a video and put it on youtube is - If after a few moments we found out it was more serious my friends would have stayed in the emergency room with me all night if it had come to that. They would have checked in on me days later. They would have laughed with me when we told the story together. They would not have speculated why I had fallen because they know why and they would not have judged me by that one moment.  The stranger that hypothetically videoed and posted such an incident would not have cared about me in any way.  The only things they would have been thinking is "how many likes and shares can I get for this" and THAT is the problem.  We are not seeing each other as people anymore.

It's time to put down the phones and the cameras and take out our compassion.  It's been missing for far too long.