I was recently scrolling on Facebook before bed when I came across a video of a woman fixing her very long hair. And while her hair was much, much longer than the average length of most females in today’s society, she didn’t deserve what I read. I suppose I’ll never learn to stay out of the comments section of viral posts or videos, and this clip was no exception. Yet even I was astounded by the amount of negativity therein, and I had to really look hard until I found a complimentary comment. It wasn’t just the fact that I had to search to find something kind. It was the point of how horrible every single comment was.
“Ugly!”
“That’s disgusting!”
“Hideous!!”
And still it continued, complete with puking emojis and GIFs.
“OMG! What the hell is wrong with her?!”
“That’s just gross!”
“Hell, no!”
I had a pretty good idea from watching that it was for religious reasons the woman in the video had her hair so long, but whether it was or whether it wasn’t, that’s not what bothered me so much. What bothered me was the disregard for human decency. I couldn’t figure out if people actually forgot that a real person with real feelings was behind the screen, or if they just really didn’t care. I mean, surely if they were face to face with this woman they wouldn’t tell her she was ugly and hideous. Would they?
As a longtime writer of articles that frequently went viral, I had endured the awful comments from strangers. I wasn’t sure if they assumed the author would never see them, if they thought I was a fictional individual without emotion, or if perhaps they had no problem with me seeing their slurs.
“You’re a terrible mother!”
“I feel sorry for your husband!”
“Idiot!”
“This is the dumbest s@*t I’ve ever read!”
And even…
“I hope you kill yourself. Soon!”