A Regrettable Trend

There's this meme that was going around a couple days ago. A "meme", if I understand it right, is simply some kind of joke or idea that sparks a trend online. I never have cared for them myself, maybe because I've never been trendy. In any case, this one revolved around maintaining one's privacy on Facebook. Supposedly, if one posted a certain message filled with legal-sounding jargon, one's postings were protected from theft by Facebook itself or anyone else.

People can be dumb. Even the smart ones can act dumb at times, and so lots of people went and posted the message like it was going to do something. Of course, it wasn't and couldn't, so it was like having a magic amulet or something, except those at least are a nice piece of jewelry to wear. People really can be dumb. I just assumed it couldn't do anything, and so I didn't bother to go to the trouble of researching it.

Other people were willing to do the legwork to debunk it, which was fine by me. People mostly don't make the effort to find out anything about something before acting. I come across things I don't know anything about as often as anyone, I suppose, but I make a point of looking into the thing before I form any opinions or make any commitments. It's even fun to learn, which is more than I can say for the step of acting on what I've learned.

I'm probably guilty of some of what I'm decrying here, but at least I can say I never looked silly by standing behind a lot of gobbledy-gook like it was going to stand up in court, and never took a stand on some social or geopolitical issue that I knew positively nothing about. Rest assured, I'll lay on my deathbed with regrets, but one of them is not going to be that I knew too little about the things I said and did before I said and did them.