Another standout
Following on from my blog on Positivity that I wrote two days ago, another response has taken my fancy. This time, it wasn’t a post but one of those frequent teaser articles that seem to flood Facebook these days. The bit in view tells an alluring story with the punch line missing. One then needs to scroll through the reel for ages before the cover story comes up, that is, if it does at all. Readers have become quite clever, in that they will leave the outcome in the comments section, to save other unsuspecting viewers from either scrolling forever to find what happens or reading forever to see the piece the cover was alluding to. And often there is no mention of what was used in the lure to draw readers in, anyway. I don’t know whether advertisers think they are being clever with these types of stories or not. All they are doing is pissing readers off. Get to the point, is the frequent thought and comment. Nobody, except for advertisers, enjoys these types of stories. Most readers just want Facebook back to how it used to be with posts from friends, not article after article of this kind. I must admit the algorithms are good in putting stories there that actually do interest me, just not the way they go about writing them. And for what it is worth, to all those advertisers out there who pay for these type of placements, I don’t ever look at your ads, I scroll right past them. And I suspect many other readers do the same.
Anyway, the reason for writing this blog today was to share the piece that tickled my fancy. It started out like the others I have just mentioned – an alluring opening, with me scrolling through page after page, looking to find the relevant story and thus get the ending. I didn’t ever get that far, but I certainly got my entertainment’s worth. This particular piece was people recounting their embarrassing experiences, along with tedious dialogue. I didn’t read any of that, just the accounts, written in small print. Most of them were teenagers telling how the parent showed up at their school or pub when they had sneaked in as underage patrons and most were pretty boring, that is until I struck the gem.
This one was not a first-person account, rather, the retelling of a friend’s experience. A mother had caught her youngster viewing something on line that he shouldn’t have been watching. I wasn’t sure of the meaning of the word used, but by the context of the story, I would say it was some kind of soft porn. The child’s punishment was that he was made to sit and finish watching the whole thing. I am thinking, what the hell, what’s going on here? Until I read the next bit…with his mother, who was a devout Catholic, sitting beside him. Once again, I laughed so hard. Now that would be embarrassing.
So as much as I loathe these types of stories, now and again something comes up that is actually really funny. In balance, I would probably prefer that they weren’t on Facebook, but I must say I did enjoy last night’s laugh.