Here’s a word of advice, ‘Facebook can ruin your health’

Much like alcohol and organised religion, Facebook can ruin your health, wreck your marriage and make you appear stupider than you are.

But it also brings great joy in other ways. Take a simple thing like brunch. There are people out there who, through postings on Facebook, remind us that brunch can be a spiritual epiphany. “OMG! Just had the most DI- VINE brunch eva!!”

The same goes for children. If it weren’t for parents posting pictures of their perfect progeny, you might think it was normal to have unremarkable offspring. Thanks to their efforts, we now know that some kids are so brilliant that one is almost blinded by their corus- cating countenances and super- natural intelligence.

My best, though, are the gut-churning parables and three-hankie homilies. Flipping through Facebook is like having a stream of Jehovah’s Witnesses ringing your doorbell while Paulo Coelho sits in your lounge spouting 20-word truisms dressed up as profundity.

The practice of posting platitudinous parables, ass-kissing aphorisms and hackneyed self-help clichés is not only monstrously offensive to the condemned and the cursed – among whom I count myself – but also an indictment of the depths to which these meddling missionaries and phoney philosophers will stoop in their nugatory quest to help others see what they call “the light”, but what I call moral bestiality.

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I would wager that many of those who flood Facebook with these disposable sermons suffer either from poor self-esteem or a pestilential smorgasbord of personality disorders. If Facebook is where you find redemption or look for lessons on how to live your life, you’re in a lot more trouble than you think. Here is a sampling of this esoteric excrescence.

“Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass – it’s about learning to dance in the rain.” The picture is of a child standing in the rain. She doesn’t look happy, probably because she knows she’s in for a thrashing when she gets home.

“What’s the hell is wrong with you?” her gin-soaked mother will shout. “Why didn’t you wait for the bloody storm to pass?” “The human spirit needs places where nature has not been rearranged by the hand of man.”

We see an angry mob of trees posing aggressively for the camera. I don’t believe in spirits, unless it’s Klipdrift you’re talking about.

And the kind of places that have not been rearranged by the hand of man (even though it is women who do most of the rearranging) are in such remote areas that you’d be a fool to go there alone. Nature in its raw form will go out of its way to kill you.

“Being strong doesn’t always mean you have to fight the battle. True strength is be- ing adult enough to walk away with your head held high.”

Bollocks.

You must fight the battle. Unless, of course, you started it, in which case it’s more fun to sneak off and watch from a safe distance. Still, I wouldn’t advise using that craven “adult enough” rationale while backing out of a bar fight in Benoni. Your head will be held high, alright. It just won’t be attached to your body.

“Even in the darkest of night there is hope. As the moon lights our path so does hope light our way.” No, it doesn’t. Hope is the last refuge of the doomed. It smells of lavender and carries a concealed weapon. Hope will not hesitate to bludgeon you from behind, moon or no moon.

“Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.”

This is the kind of paranoid, judgmental gibberish shouted by a right-wing redneck moments before he slaps his wife, drags a giant bag of ammonium nitrate into his bakkie and blows himself up outside a government building.

“Respect yourself enough to walk away from anything that no longer serves you, grows you or makes you happy.”

Right, then. That’s my job and marriage out the window. Can I come and live with you? “God made the horse from the breath of the wind, the beauty of the earth and the soul of the angel.”

Rubbish.

A horse will pretend to be your friend until you’re on his back and then he will do the exact opposite of what you say. At some point he will try to murder you. You wouldn’t buy a tea-towel that said, “Believe you can and you’re halfway there”, but see it on Facebook and your eyes fill with tears.

“YES! So very TRUE! Thank you!” Were those who churn out this second-rate salvation raised by wolves? Or do they genuinely have the mental capacity of your basic garden gnome? For the sake of humanity, I pray it’s the wolves. Thank you for not sharing.