General Admission--Facebook Offenders--The Dungeon

There are certain types of people who deserve to be in here, punished for their stupidity. It would be a waste of time and energy that they don't deserve to list them individually so today we are inducting a few groups of folks en masse who fall under certain umbrellas of thought--or lack thereof.  While the majority of these incidents occur on Facebook, these "thoughts" do spill over into IRL conversations as well. Those people are even more worthy of The Dungeon as they didn't simply click and share the bullshit, they've had time to think it through and bring it into conversation.

Without further ado, our inductees:

*People who continue to "like" and "share" the "Like/share this picture of Bill Gates/Jamie Foxx/Steve Jobs kissing a poodle/shaving a yak/mooning the Queen and he'll give you free computers/a bazillion dollars/hookers and blow for life!" pictures. Bill Gates is not giving your dumb ass anything for clicking on a word on Facebook. 

Bill Gates does lots of great things with his money. He donates millions to education initiatives, disease prevention and global health development. What he is not doing is writing checks to people who click "like" and then post, "It can't hurt!" Yes, it can. By spreading your bullshit picture around, it gets more views and it not only clutters up the feeds of your non-gullible friends but it starts to desensitize people to some of the actually true and helpful happenings that Facebook can be used to publicize and spread.

*Anyone who posts about how much better schools would be if we put God/the Bible/prayer "back" in them. You are idiots. None of those things was ever banned from schools--not that any of them should be there to begin with. Just because Buffalo Wild Wings won't let you go in and turn all their TVs to your favorite soap opera doesn't mean you--or melodrama--has been banned from chicken restaurants. It simply means that you are a selfish asshole for expecting everyone else to do what you want to do all the time and they aren't having it. Same with schools. Go take God/the Bible/prayer and pout in church where you all belong.

*The sorry excuses for humans who like to post negative things about welfare recipients. Whether it's the snarky e-cards about people using food stamps while talking on iPhones or the witty, "Don't forget to pay your taxes so the government can give it to people who don't work as hard as you do!" memes or everyone's favorite, "We should drug test all welfare recipients!" screeds.Some of these folks teeter dangerously close to Torture Chamber territory but for now, we'll let them cool their heels here. 

I'm not going to get into the math--you can look up the data. SNAP and TANF are in place for temporary assistance for people who need it to live. Of course there are abuses--there are always abuses of everything. People pump out tons more ketchup than they need from the dispenser at McDonalds, people eat grapes walking through the produce department, folks go to town on the chips and salsa at the Mexican restaurant and then order smaller entrees. First off, it's human nature to take and second, there are always going to be selfish assholes who try to ruin it for other people. But it takes a special kind of evil to actively want to make children go hungry. 

That's what this comes down to--especially the drug testing for benefits argument. The most galling thing is when people couch their arguments in "I don't want MY tax dollars going to..." Funny, you never seem to give a shit which sidewalk or bike lane YOUR tax dollars are installing, whether we need it or not. I rarely see people complain about THEIR tax dollars paying those firemen to sit around and eat chili when they aren't fighting fires. When's the last time you heard someone grumble about their "hard-earned money" being wasted on stoplights and tornado sirens? But let one of them see a woman on SNAP buying anything but dried beans at the store and you'd think she attacked him at knife-point and stole his 401K. Interestingly, when you point out that corporations get way more welfare from the government than any disabled vet could ever dream of, these same folks just shrug and sigh, "What can you do..." 

People get upset about the poor getting welfare for one reason--fear. You see, people have an irrational feeling that they are closer in standing to the CEO getting the corporate welfare than they are the single mom guiltily, surreptitiously buying a birthday cake for her kid with her SNAP card. However, deep down they know the opposite is true. Most Americans are just a few paychecks (sometimes just one) away from homelessness, food stamps, the whole bit. And that scares them to death. So they project that fear on the people who are in that very situation because it makes them feel distanced from it. Well wrap this up with a Terry Pratchett quote: 

It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.