I would like to share an amazing story
with all of you!
Last Thursday morning, a woman was on a
subway in Stockholm. Sitting near her was a gang of 16-year-old boys
looking at violent pornography on their cellphones. Laughing about
it. Showing porn to each other. And everyone around them was
disgusted- disgusted!- including a 14-year-old girl who looked at the
woman with sadness and longing in her eyes, as if to say, “Please,
can’t you do something? Can’t anyone please do something?”
Finally, the woman had enough, and her
head exploded! It EXPLODED! And in the last second, as she got off
the train, she grabbed the phone from the loudest boy and said, “I
am going to call your mother and tell her where she can pick up this
phone, but not before I tell her what a little bastard you are!”
…It was a long second! It was not
long enough for anyone in the gang to react to someone stealing one
of their phones, nor long enough for the phone to lock itself, and
this is good because the woman was able to find that boy’s mother!
(I’m assuming on his contact list, under “Mother”.) And she sent
his mother the links and the pictures the boys had looked at, and she called the mother to explain, and the mother began to cry, she
wailed, “NO! Not my son! I’m a Feminist!!” And the woman began
to cry, she said, “I, too, am a Feminist!” And they had a long
chat about Feminism, and the world became a slightly better place.
Then the woman went on to Facebook and
she wrote this story down EXACTLY as it happened, and within a few
hours, 55,000 people shared it! A major Swedish newspaper,
Aftonbladet, published an article about it, blog after blog after
blog praised this amazing woman, and it all makes me so happy!
Because every single day, no less than twenty to thirty times, I am
annoyed by someone near me on their phone, and now I know I can steal
a shitload of phones, and society will say, “HURRAH!”
Please join me in celebrating this
incredible woman. Her name is Johanna Sthlm… I’m not sure how you
pronounce her last name, but by an amazing coincidence, that’s also
an abbreviation for Stockholm! I mean, what are the odds? She’s
normally a very shy woman; I can tell because not only did she delete
this story after it had been shared so many times, she only has 34
friends! So please, look her up on Facebook and send her a Friend
Request, because a woman this courageous deserves more fans than
Jesus!
There’s just one problem with the
story! …It’s an enormous pile of horseshit. First of all, all of
this allegedly happened in Sweden- Swedes are not known for being
great at conflict. Second of all, the story is just too awesome.
It’s a great story, but that’s all it is. Still, Aftonbladet, 55,000
people all said, “Hmm, Johanna Sthlm, 34 friends, this story can’t
possibly be too good to be true. <Share>, I’m gonna <Share>
that.”
I am often flabbergasted by bogus
stories and articles that are shared on Facebook by people I consider
intelligent, but who didn’t think twice about checking the source or
being the least bit suspicious. It could just be that I am a cynic,
but we all need a healthy dose of cynicism, or at least skepticism.
I can’t say I blame them too much, though, because it would be nice
to believe that sort of thing happens in real life. Plus, we’ve all
been in a situation where we thought of the perfect thing to say or
do, one hour too late, and it’s worse than not thinking of anything
at all.
But that’s what Facebook is for. We
can create this fantasy world where we are all perfect and smart and
funny and fast, and it’s a beautiful world! I mean, I have nearly
700 Facebook friends! In the real world, I’m not sure how many of
them would pee on me if I was on fire, but I’m guessing, probably
less than half.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, take
what you read on Facebook with a fistful of salt. Now, if you’ll
excuse me, Hicks, Pryor and Carlin have risen from the dead and would
like me to open for their World Tour.
