1. The desperately misinformed plebes who regurgitate ignorant and hateful remarks about religion, politics, human rights, and current events. I've learned to shake my head and move on, but the temptation to publicly ridicule these simpletons is ever present, waiting to rear its ugly head and inspire a fruitless rant that falls on deaf ears.
2. The predictable, generic, poorly-lit, bouquet-of-red-roses-and-box-of-candy photos that are posted en masse on Valentine's Day. I'm sorry, ladies, but Valentine's Day is an anti-feminist corporate-fueled joke of a holiday that infantilizes grown women and reinforces the childish notion that a man must prove his love for us by buying us things--completely unoriginal things, I might add, that the industry has arbitrarily designated as universal symbols of love. I'll tell you something: everybody's love is entirely original and no one symbol works for everyone. Flowers are pretty and I'm happy for anyone who receives flowers for any reason, but receiving a bouquet of flowers on a phony Hallmark holiday is not definitive proof that somebody loves you (nor should anyone feel compelled to prove that they are loved to a cyber-group of friends and distant acquaintances).
3. The rampant epidemic of Marilyn Monroe misquotes, the most egregious of which appears on many a profile belonging to many a prepubescent/pubescent/college-age/twenty-something young lady:
"I'm selfish, impatient, and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control, and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."
This is a highly disturbing quotation that makes the speaker sound like a petulant circus monkey. "Out of control"? "Hard to handle"? Worse, this statement has the dubious distinction of being simultaneously misandrist and misogynist: it insinuates that men should simply accept bad behavior from women because all they really want out of women is their "best" parts.
(I doubt that I need to explain why this quote is misogynist; the word "handle" alone says it all.)
The ongoing popularity of this rubbish quotation in social media is not that mystifying, if you think about it. It serves as a cutesy justification statement for immature, entitled women who truly believe that being in possession of lady parts renders them exempt from the usual consequences of being an asshole. It also makes women feel sexy and glamorous to try to associate themselves with Marilyn Monroe.
But wait. You guys...you guys...Marilyn Monroe never said this.
There is absolutely no proof that these words came out of Norma Jeane's mouth. Yet somewhere along the tortuous lines of print journalism and social media, this idiotic quotation became attached to Marilyn Monroe. But I assure you, there is nothing to suggest that Monroe said this. For all we know, Jay Leno said it.
What's gotten my knickers in a twist about this whole quote debacle is not even the content of the quote (although it is undeniably asinine), it's the fact that social media requires no proofreading or editing for accuracy; people can put literally anything out there without any need for accountability. You can attribute words to people who never said them, because nobody is doing any fact-checking on your Facebook profile. Whatever you put into cyberspace can be misinterpreted as fact by an unsuspecting follower. Rumors are perpetuated and misinformation is accepted; the lines between fact and falsehoods are progressively blurred. Having your words printed used to be a privilege. Now any irresponsible nincompoop can post an infinite amount of unreliable data through social media, and, unless you have the werewithal to do your own research, you can easily find yourself accepting assertions that are blatantly incorrect.
Poor Norma Jeane had enough trauma in her life. She was a survivor of childhood sexual abuse and struggled with mental illness, which culminated in her suicide at the age of 36. While she may very well have described herself as "out of control" and "hard to handle", it still isn't fair to assign words to her that she never said in order for modern-day girls and women to attempt to justify their own bad behavior.
The lesson here is this: try not to perpetuate misinformation. This example is, of course, relatively harmless (a dumb quote is falsely attributed to a deceased movie star), but misinformation can have dire consequences (for example, the attacks on Sikh Americans after 9/11 because social media helped foster a belief amongs ignorant yokels that all turban-wearing individuals are terrorists). So please, be thoughtful about what you post on social media. One of the unfortunate side effects of the digital age is that literally anyone can be a quasi-"journalist", and your words--whether they deserve to or not--matter.
