My thoughts on Facebook.

Years ago, after Myspace was cool, I was sneaky and created a Facebook account, even though I wasn't supposed to. And for a while, Facebook was pretty cool. I got to see what my friends were up to, and share pictures of my own and have a place to keep them all (because either the cloud didn't exist yet or I was absolutely clueless about it. probably the latter).

Then, at some point, Facebook flipped and became filled with nothing but articles and videos that were titled something like "they thought they found a mouse on their doorstep. what happened next...incredible" and news articles about all the awful things going on in the world. (side note: every time I see one of those bait articles i want to punch myself in the face.) And then, not too long after Facebook became filled with mostly other things besides friend statuses and pictures from vacations or graduations or whatever, people decided that it was okay to continually post negative comments on literally everything. And THEN, this is probably worst of it all, Facebook changed it's feed style (again) so now, at least one comment from every single post automatically shows up as I scroll through. And the comments that show up somehow are always the most negative.

Now, I'm realizing as I write this, that the logical thing to do would probably just be to unfollow the four news stations that I do follow, but I don't watch the news, and I spend plenty of time on Facebook (far more than I should) so I feel like some dose of news is better than none. And there have also been plenty of times that I've told myself I should deactivate my Facebook, but I, like many people probably, can't bring myself to do it. So yes, I could change, I am acknowledging that, but that's not my point.

My point is, when did it become okay, or even the norm, for people to voice every single negative thought they have? I am all for people having opinions, because it makes us who we are and individuality is important, but what happened to "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all"? I see so many things on Facebook that people write that just make me mad, because generally, it's something that hardly involves them, or they are throwing some other population-whether it's another gender, race, nationality, or some other group of people-completely under the bus for not being involved in the article at all. For example: once I saw this article about a women who had been working for eighty years or something and had only taken like five sick days her whole life. And the very first comment on the article said something like "such a great story. millennials could really learn something from her." And I was so confused because the article didn't mention anything about this woman being better than anybody else, or having a better work ethic than the millennials, but for some reason, this guy decided to give an entire generation a hard time. It seemed uncalled for.

And then there's the fact that with the entire world having such easy access to news articles and being able to comment on them, suddenly one situation becomes everyone's business, and everyone has something to say about it. Like the whole gorilla issue. I get that news is news, but sometimes I feel like maybe they need to scale back and share other types of things? I'm not a journalist, obviously, but as an occasional reader/viewer of the news, I would rather read/hear about happy things going on in our country. Or maybe things that involve our nation as a whole, not just Joe Shmoe from Smalltown, USA.

I don't know, maybe I'm just being super pessimistic about it all, but I get so frustrated when people make negative comments just for the sake of putting their two cents in. There is enough negativity in the world! We don't need anymore!! 

What started me on this today was something small. I follow my favorite singer, Cassadee Pope on Facebook, and she has been posting things about the CMT Awards, and how she got to sing with Pitbull and Leona Lewis last night at the awards. Everything she has posted is about how last night was unbelievable and that she was so excited for the experience, because performing at the CMT Awards is a huge deal anyway, but to do it alongside two big names in music is even cooler. The first comment said "country isn't even country anymore. pitbull and leona lewis shouldn't be allowed at a country awards show." And like, I get where this person is coming from, and I guarantee that Cassadee Pope doesn't give two craps about this lady's opinion after being onstage last night, but why on earth does she think it's okay to write a negative comment and rain on somebody's parade? That would be like somebody posting a picture of their new dog and me commenting "i hate dogs, i'm very clearly a cat person." That wouldn't do anybody any good. And it's just annoying. I'm not important enough to try and make people have bad days.

The mom of one of my friends posts a positive thought every single day on Facebook, and I appreciate her so much. Actually, I'm going to tell her that as soon as I finish this post. There seriously is so much negativity that happens each day in the world, but it's incredible how one bright light can help the rest of us shine. I'm not one to leave you with a challenge, but I think it's important that we all think about how what we are saying can impact the rest of the world. We're all here together on this earth, so we might as well do our best to make it a positive place to be.