Watch Me!

I keep getting sucked into the little videos on Facebook and on Instagram. I have clumsy fingers when I'm scrolling and end up playing them. Which I think they designed it that way. To catch you and then you end up watching. I also watched a few before I realized they weren't friends posting videos, they were random videos Facebook thought I would like. 

And then once you watch one they are like, OH you like this type of video let me show you more!

No. No, I don't. 

I like cute pets doing funny things. But like legit cute and funny, not just oh look my pet is a pet. And I don't need those remixed twenty different times and posted by other people making money off of someone else's videos. That makes me a little cranky too. 

I also have found I like the hairstyling videos. There is something kind of relaxing about watching someone do their hair. Except when it's tense, like someone at home is trying something they saw on a video and you can see it's going to go bad. But I do admire them for their bravery. Even though it's "just hair" and it "will grow back" I am extremely vain about my hair and would never risk it. Though sometimes it's amazing what those home stylists can do.

And then I found out from my friend and stylist Sara that a lot of those home stylists who are like, "Oh let's see what happens!" are actually professionals. She can tell by how they hold their scissors and part their hair. Tricks of the trade and years of experience showing in their videos. But I wouldn't have known because, as I said, I would NEVER.

And some of the little kid videos are cute. But again, so many times someone else lifts that and remixes it and your kid is now being splashed across the internet and you've lost control of their image which means they've lost control of their image and it's a little unsettling. 

But there are huge chunks of them that I hate. That I don't understand why they are out there. Aside from all of the filter ones, I mean like regular people talking on camera about something with their filters running that are changing their faces entirely, and they don't mention it. It was hard enough growing up in the 80s with magazines and advertisement photoshop presenting unattainable bodies, this? This is awful. Like, nobody has a face that smooth and even with "perfectly" applied makeup and a ton of conture you aren't going to ever achieve that. 

But past that and the remixing of other people's work for your own clicks there are ones I hate. 

"Once You See It!" ones. I love a hidden puzzle. Or an optical illusion. I like that sometimes we just flat out don't see something obvious until someone points it out. So I watched a couple of these. And you watch over and over looking for the "once you see it" portion and I could never find it. I was starting to think I was the most unobservant person in the world. Then I finally started reading the comments to find out what I had missed. 

Nothing. 

I had missed nothing. People post random clips of videos with those types of captions and there is nothing there. Just to be dicks. So I hate those. But because I watched like 3 of them before I figured out that they were just dicks Facebook keeps saying, "Here! Look! Once you see it!" Ugh.

And then the ones I really hate. Like a deep personal loathing. Like if I ever see one of these people doing this in public I will say something to them. 

The random acts of kindness videos. 

Shocked? I mean random acts of kindness are my thing. I love giving the compliment or paying the bill or giving the gift. Those are all things I dig. I love the way they make people feel when they receive something out of the blue and that feeling radiates on to me and makes me feel a warm and cuddly. But don't record that shit so other people can watch how great you are. 

I'm going to side trip here for a little bit, so bear with me. 

I think I've written before about paying part of a co-workers phone bill right? She was a single mother who aside from working for D/D (which shared an office space with us before we bought them out) built websites in her spare time. Now this was a long time ago when it was really complicated to build websites so you hired someone to do it instead of plug and play that you do now. It also was in the stone ages when we used to have to do dial up connections for the internet and the phone company charged you long distance for that. Back when the phone company charged you long distance. A long time ago is what I'm saying. 

Well she had mentioned a few times that she was really worried they were going to cut her phone off because she couldn't pay the bill. But if they cut her phone off she couldn't do the work she was doing to make ends meet. Which of course meant she would never get the phone bill paid off to make the money she needed to pay all of the bills. I talked to Brent about it to see what we could afford to help. This was in a time where we were barely making ends meet ourselves. But we were better off than she was. 

I went to phone company to pay what I could. Which ended up being a huge to do and much harder than I thought necessary. I had her name and phone number and address and I only wanted to pay part of her bill. I didn't want to know how much she owed, or when she'd last paid, I just wanted to pay part of her bill, anonymously. Seemed like a simple thing and it really wasn't. Took almost my whole lunch hour and two levels of supervisors to get it done. But I got it done. Paid down what she owed, I couldn't pay it all but I figured any amount would help.

And then I waited for her to tell me all about the great surprise she had when she saw the credit on her bill. And I waited and I waited. She never said anything. And I got a little pissed off. And I was a little pissed off for a good long while until I realized that I was the asshole. You don't do something like that for someone and then expect them to be grateful to you for it. You do something like that for someone because you can. 

Years later I worked through even more complex feelings around it. I had done it anonymously partly because I wanted it to be a surprise and partly because I didn't want her to expect me to do more. I hadn't yet gotten past my religious upbringing mixed with conservative politics. See, that mixture battles itself all the time. The religious part calls you to acts of charity and to help people when they need it. The conservative politics says things like, "if you feed a stray it will keep showing up" which you should know that as soon as you are comparing people to animals you've lost the moral high ground, and yet...

When my sister went on Food Stamps my dad took it as a personal embarrassment. He had barely been able to stand when she got WIC. But that at least was for women and babies so it seemed a little better in his head. Full on benefits was for lazy people who didn't want to work. (Conservative political philosophy) And in our house we fucking worked. 

I know people who know me now as the lady of leisure that I am have a hard time imagining it but I started working at age 6. My father was managing a gas station at the time and my job was to clean the bathrooms. Yep, at 6 years old I was expected to pitch in and help and I got the lovely job of cleaning gas station bathrooms (I'm still making the face even as I write this) by the time I was 10-12 my brother was a district manager for the local paper. So every Sunday morning I was up in the middle of the night in the back seat of Jeff's car surrounded by bundles of newspapers wrapping them for Jeff to deliver. I still hate the smell of newsprint.

I worked through high school at over the table jobs instead of just helping Mom and Dad and Jeff with theirs. My Dad worked two jobs for a good chunk of my life. My Mom worked full time, Jeff worked full time. We worked in my house. And so when Susan needed to go on benefits to make it it was a shock to the system. We knew we weren't lazy. So how did this happen? Instead of changing a viewpoint on the type of people who ended up needing help it was easier to be ashamed. 

It reminded me of a time in middle school when I was spending the night with my friend Evie. It was Christmas and her church had just delivered a food box to their doorstep.  As Evie, her brother and I, sorted through the things and put them away her mother said, "I didn't think when I donated to the drive that we were the people who they thought needed help." She was embarassed. They did need help though. She was a single mother with two kids who was barely getting by. But taking help? That was embarrassing. 

So when I paid what I could on her phone bill I still had a lot of those old ideas in my head. That I would help because it was the right thing to do. But I wouldn't tell her it was me because I didn't want to encourage her dependance on help. And I wanted some fucking credit because...well...because. 

I cringe at that now. I hadn't yet fully formed my current ideas around helping people. That you help because it's the right thing to do and it's okay that it also makes you feel good, but the feeling good is based around the doing good, not any sort of recognition. I also know that there are a lot of reasons she might not have said anything about the credit on her bill. One it didn't pay it all off, they let me know that much, and it might not have made all that much difference depending on what she owed. Like how $10,000 seems like a lot of money for debt relief but if you owe over $100,000 it's not nothing, but it's also not all that great. And she could also have been embarrassed. I have no way of knowing if she mentioned her outstanding bill to anyone else. So even though I did it anonymously, it might have been anonymous at all. And she might have been embarassed that sharing a hard time with me made it seem like she was begging for help. 

I don't know. I don't know at all. But I do know that I did something nice and then wiped it out with expecting something back. 

So..random acts of kindness videos. I hate them. When you, the person making the video, pick out some "poor unfortunate soul" to receive your kindness and then film them for a reaction you are being such a dick. Like a gigantic asshole. The good thing you are doing does not outweigh the fact that you are potentially embarrassing a stranger. That you are making someone a prop in your life. Oh look as I shower kindness on this person like and subscribe!

I love random acts of kindness. I love helping people out when you can. I love that the world can sometimes be a much kinder place than we give it credit for. I love all of that. But I do not love when people do it for the clicks. Or for the recognition. 

When you read about someone's generosity it should inspire you to do great things. But not because people will tell you that you are great, because it's the right thing to do. Give silently. Give behind the scenes. Help when you can and know that the feeling you get from helping someone is what you get from it. Not adoration from others. Not indebtedness from the person you are helping. They owe you nothing. Not even a thank you, though that's just polite. 

Think about how much more impressed you are when you find out that someone rich has given away a lot of money privately than you are when they set up a foundation and give away comically large paper checks with a lot of fanfare. Both things do good for people, but one of them still feels selfish and self serving.

It ceases to be an act of kindness if you are doing it for the recognition. Then it becomes performance art and you are an asshole for making someone else's misery your background. 

Keep doing kind things. But for fuck's sake if I ever catch you recording it for the likes...well let's just say my face is doing a whole other thing right now and you should never want to see that in person.

Now off to watch someone make rainbow colors in the layers of their hair...I could use some soothing.