Whatever you do, don’t tell Damon Young to “hang in there”!
It happens at least twice a week. Actually, let me stop lying. This shit happens to me five to seven times everyday.
I’ll be minding my business on VSB or EBONY or Food.com, drinking lukewarm lemonade, eating salmon and fried eggs, and sitting in the Gay Reindeer’s pink robe because it’s cold in our house and she’s a vampire and she refuses to turn on the heat until the temperature falls to 37 and her robe is warmer than mine, and I’ll decide to check Facebook to see how many cool people liked my latest status message.
When finished counting the likes, I’ll check my newsfeed to see how many of my friends are sharing articles with words like “appropriation” and “intersectionality” in their titles, and I’ll might even hold a mini-contest in my head to see who has the day’s best humblebrag.
***Actually, this is also a lie. If I did do a daily Facebook humblebrag contest, the exact same guy would win everyday. It is not a game with his humblebrag game. Seriously, he’s the type of dude that would say “Man, was rushing out the door and forgot to brush my teeth. They’re so straight and white that I forget I still need to do it sometimes. #mybadcolgate #forgivemetoothfairy #blessed”***
But, right in the middle of all this fun, someone named “Pam” or “Greg” or some other shittily annoying name will decide to bless the universe with some shitty-ass, meaningless-ass, taken from the cafeteria toilet paper at a Hallmark distribution center-ass inspirational status, and I will want to reach through the monitor and garrote them with a USB cord.
I know this hate is irrational, illogical, and borderline insane, but something about seeing some f*ck-ass share an inspirational picture, a shittily “uplifting” quote, or some “deep” message that Gandhi probably tweeted while he was throwing erasers at kittens makes me want to hurl, clean the hurl up, put it in a paper bag, set it on fire, piss on the fire, and leave it in their mailbox.
Perhaps I’m too cynical to believe that some Fisher Price platitude is actually going to inspire anyone. Perhaps I’m so cynical that I assume anyone who regularly sends messages like that are just trying to deflect attention from the raped otters buried in their basement. And, perhaps I’m just not a good person, and my not good-ness is annoyed whenever someone is openly trying to better themselves.
Either way, if you happen to see me, and you happen to think that “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart” or some other Hellen Keller-ass shit is going to cheer me up, unless you feel like getting shanked by an expired YMCA membership card, please happen to keep it to yourself.
Originally appeared at Very Smart Brothas
I can’t help but chuckle at this. By its very nature, an inspirational message ought to be unique – not part of an endless (mindless, indistinguishable) stream of feel good (pop-culture-approved) missives, which, incidentally, have the opposite effect for some of us.
I recall reading an article on the NY Times awhile back on the power of “negative” thinking – which some of us don’t think of as negative at all, but rather, realistic and pragmatic.
But the sarcastic quotes that get sent around? Can’t help myself. Love them.
I sympathize with you very much. 🙂 For me there is an added dimension of vexation to the thing too: as a German native speaker for me the words “inspiration” and “inspired” have maybe slightly different connotations than usually in English. For me, inspiration is pretty much the same thing as creativity. To be inspirated is the state of a artist, when his senses are highly excited and he is having ideas. Or a scientist, who is finding new theories. Einstein was inspired when he thought up the theory of relativity. With those meaningless messages, however, you are never inspired… Read more »