Doing Good Well

Any good statement comes with an implied grammar lesson.

When doing anything on Facebook, you can be sure that you’re doing it wrong. If you spend even a paltry amount of time on the biggest re-definer of social interaction since the Internet, you’ll have categorized all of the people you know in your news feed based on their approach to using Facebook. Fact: you’ve probably shared an article or meme that breaks the people down and tags everyone into their Facebook stereotype.

                Everyone uses it for something, and no matter what, that use is going to be perceived as the wrong way to use Facebook by someone else. Another fact: someone is always willing to tell you you’re not supposed to use Facebook for something you can use it for. Confusing, I know.

                Let me ask you something: how often does using Facebook actually make you feel good? Have you ever temporarily quit using it (and announced on it that you were doing so)? Have you made a Lent-like vow to use it less? Do you set yourself limits? Are you glad your work blocks it? Have you changed your behaviour as a result of your interaction with others on it?

                Final fact: most of us use Facebook. I’m not about to quit, because, despite my personal pet peeves (people who announce their every behaviour all day long, people who believe idiotic conspiracies because they’ve been re-posted, people who confuse their homonyms), I still find it’s an excellent way to trade information, keep in touch with people, and, yes, to be entertained.

                Although those cheesy inspirational memes annoy me too, I do appreciate where they’re coming from, because I appreciate when people are attempting good. What I can’t get over is how quickly any attempt at doing good is ridiculed, criticized, or “well actually”-ed by folks who always find it easier to sit and do nothing but criticize rather than attempt to make life any better.

                You may have heard of the 100 Day Happiness Challenge.           http://www.rappler.com/technology/features/50182-viral-happy-days-challenge

                I heard about it on the radio and thought, “Sort of sounds interesting. I like challenges and discussing them with people.”

I got home and looked it up and, yes, there were a couple of articles online about it, but these were far outnumbered by those criticizing it.

If you fail the challenge you’ll be even more depressed. Forced highs guarantee colossal lows, study shows.

Let me get this straight: people were attempting to find reasons to rosy up their days a little, to not let themselves get caught in the muck of day to day, and it’s out and out attacked? Does no one see the irony in the unhappy challenging the happy’s right to be so?

Like all things you have to choose what side you’re on, but what I couldn’t believe was how quickly the trenches were dug and the salvos fired off. People are willing to hate so hard and believe anything so quickly.

I always marvel at the comments sections of online articles; most of the time I think they should be disabled because they simply support our keyboard judgements of one another. Lord help you if you’re ever trying to say something good, because you’re guaranteed to be called out immediately for your short-sightedness, your naiveté, by the so-called realists out there.

Let it get to you and it’s enough to make a person not want to be good anymore. But as the saying goes, it’s easier to criticize than create.

So do I have a solution? Well, not exactly, but I have a suggestion.

Don’t be stupid. 
If you want to do good—and you had better—than you can’t just blindly cast your deeds out to the wind and say “That’s just what I think” and cross your digital arms and pout your digital lips. Doing good requires just as much smarts as being a realistic cynic. More, because it's harder. Do your legwork, the risk is greater, because good things are harder to do than nothings.

Reposting a picture on Facebook to show that you support an end to world poverty doesn’t do a thing for world poverty. Liking a returned soldier does nothing but slightly improve your own sense of self-worth temporarily. If that’s what it takes, you need to do some work getting to know yourself anyway.

I’m sure you’re aware of the “no make-up selfie” challenge that went around the past couple of months. Women were supposed to post a shot of themselves first thing in the morning, no make-up, hair uncombed. Real. Their comments sections lit up at their “bravery” and their “natural beauty.” Aw, shucks, that’s awesome.

Very few were aware that this misaligned little game somehow grew from a campaign to raise cancer awareness. Like moustaches in November, what good is all this awareness actually doing us?

The game became louder than the cause, because no one was stopping to think, listen, read. Well, read this and then think:        

  http://daisyraphael.wordpress.com/2014/03/27/pretty-pictures-my-makeup-free-selfie-2/

Have you ever thought that doing good is so easily ridiculed, that it seems like the world is becoming a worse place because our attempts at bettering it are often so half-hearted? Like Hollywood’s ribbon campaigns or honking to show you support cause du jour, creating awareness of something does little.

If you want to put something out for the world to see, if you cringe at the thought of the potential commentary, take a long hard think before you do it, and decide whether the good you are doing is actually doing any good.