Good Morning! (Or Whatever!) I Am Going to Complain About Facebook! (Not Really.)

[Content Note: Christian Supremacy.]

I have a very tiny private Facebook account that I use to stay in touch with family and friends. And sometimes I love it, but sometimes I really hate it. For all the reasons people hate Facebook. But especially this reason: Because there are people who will share a picture of something sad and terrible, like a child with an illness or an injured animal, and it will be accompanied with this text:

1 like = 10,000 prayers
Ignore = U don't care
These are my options? I can "like" it and indicate I'm "praying" for whatever sad thing needs my help and attention, or I can not "like" it and indicate I'm a black-hearted apathetic monster?

How about fuck off? How about that?

Setting aside the totally separate but legit discussion of how social media WHICH I LOVE WITH SO MANY HEARTS AS A KEY PART OF MEANINGFUL ACTIVISM has the capacity to make people feel like they're "doing something" when they're not with lazy reassurances that clicking "like" is sending up "10,000 prayers," I want to note that this is one of those little examples of Christian Supremacy (and although I have Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Wiccan, and other non-Christian spiritual friends on FB, it is only the Christians who post these things) that might sound cute to Christians but is totally hostile and alienating to atheists.

U don't care
There are other ways of caring besides prayer—in fact, I would argue (and I suspect a lot of teaspooning Christians would agree with me), there are many better ways of caring besides prayer.

I rarely get truly offended by something (normally, as is well documented, heh, I am merely contemptuous), but I am offended by someone who knows me sticking that in a place where I'm going to see it, where they are signing on to the message that I don't care because I spend my days involved in activism, advocacy, and volunteering instead of clicking "like" to send "10,000 prayers" to a god in which I don't believe.

Atheists (and other non-Christians, to varying degrees) swim in a sea of these incessant little Christian slights implying that we are compassionless, apathetic, immoral, cold, fundamentally indecent people.

Which is to say nothing of the bolder attacks on our character and the assertions that our lives are pointless.

Shit gets old.

Having religion is not a shorthand for being a good person, but a lot of people treat it like it is. And thus they reflexively treat not having religion as shorthand for being a bad person. And oh the exceptionalism when I point out, hey, you know, I'm an atheist. "Not you! Of course not you! We didn't mean you!"

You're not like those other atheists.

You know what? Yes I am.