Love, Humanity, Unfriending, & A Troll Infestation
Playing The Long Game
Ope!
I posted the meme above last night on my personal Facebook wall… and by this morning it had nearly 8,000 reactions… which are things like likes, loves, angry emojis, laughing emojis, etc.
As of right now, it has 12,000 reactions, 2,200 comments, and 2,100 shares.
Whoops.
The trouble with that is that you get a troll infestation, and there’s no spray for that. Blocking the trolls takes time and they just come back — like whack-a-mole. One threatened to keep reincarnating on new profiles to keep harassing me if I block him again.
Facepalm.
How do people have so much time and energy to be harassing? They’re like a swarm of mosquitoes. I’ll add — a viral post could be awesome like if it was getting the word out for this work to make shift happen, but that’s not what this was. Sheesh. Too bad you can’t pick which of your posts gets heavy engagement.
Ain’t nobody got time to sort out 2,200 comments, so for today the trolls have that particular thread.
But for the long term… the trolls WILL NOT win the country. That’s a fact.
The mosquito-mole-trolls got no game except fear and hate.
Love and humanity are way, way more powerful. I’ll come back to that in a minute.
Getting Out The Hacksaw
Related, I unfriended one of my longest real-world connections last night on Facebook. Old ties. Deep roots. But I got out the unfriending hacksaw and cut that connection.
This meme below inspired it, but it wasn’t the main reason. This absurd meme is just some callous thing about basically not wanting to invest in and take care of people... making it look like when we do take care of people that we'd have restrictions; like a lion in a cage.
But whatever. I didn’t even pick a fight on the meme.
I was just done.
The main reason I’m done is the callousness.
Disconnecting from people I’ve long known is a somber and serious thing and I've thought about this particular one for a long time. But I don’t need to hold space for that connection or that person anymore.
It's the callousness.
It’s the callous mentality. The absolute refusal to want government to take care of vulnerable people. The casual moral turpitude of spreading that ideology through menial, inaccurate, poorly oversimplified memes.
🏛️ Taking care of vulnerable people is one of the hugest reasons why we have government, for crying out loud.
I want connections who care about taking care of vulnerable people.
I want connections who can be open to loving humans.
All the humans.
🎶💃🏾 No, the Democrats aren't perfect. Even this week of radiance and dancing and awesome has had its suboptimal moments.
But the love is there. ❤️
That's what's resonating. 🌟
Well it's the biggest and most powerful thing that's resonating, anyway.
The Humanity Bit
We're in a battle for the future of this country. Everyone seems to know that.
But I'm not sure that everyone sees it as a battle for our humanity.
At some level millions of us know that but I hope we keep talking about it. And doing more to make that point.
I hope we keep loving the love we saw this week in all the families on stage. Even as they've been attacked, for showing love to each other in various ways.
I hope we get better at showing that kind of love ourselves.
Even in places where the callousness reigns.
Eventually, the love and the radiance cracks through. Okay well maybe not but it's a lovely thought. At the very least, the love and the radiance spread through the people who are open to it — on any side. That’s a good thing.
Lots of people found hope this week where before they were more hardened and guarded. There’s a softening.
🌡️ Not unrelated, it does seem like some of the Trump fever might be lowering. Not breaking, but lowering maybe just slightly.
I don't think we're out of the woods in terms of risk...
But the love is more powerful than the hate.
It always always always is.
And right now the love is absolutely empowered. 🌟⭐✨
We need to keep it going.
I think we can.
I think it happens with activities that show that love in communities everywhere. Click here to get started —
I think we can get things going all over the place. 🎈🤸🏼♀️🎶💃🏾🎤
Parties and storytelling and rallies and socials that all show the love. For humans. For taking care of people. For kindness. For rights. For women's rights. For the rights of any person of any shade and any gender and any other nuances.
We can keep showing the love, and we can do it right where we live. A lot. We can bring people into the love and the parties and the picnics and the socials.
That's just me. I've spent years working on an organization to do just that. We're all set up to help people and groups do that so holler if you're interested.
In the meantime, keep the faith. In us. In our humanity.
All of this radiance and amazingness can get even bigger. So let's do it.
Forward.
🤺
Survey!
And hey, if you’d like to vote on your Top 10 of our core big ideas for making that kind of shift happen, vote here! More on the bottom of this sparkly vision post.
The poll is open through Labor Day —
Vanessa Burnett is the Executive Director of Shift the Country, a unique nonprofit set up to drive civic engagement, public pressure, and voter turnout to create a more equitable, resilient, and sustainable democracy. Vanessa is a former homeland security professional with 25+ years experience in resilience, big disasters, wildland fire, emergency management, land management, continuity of operations, and disaster information sharing.