Someone complains that her sister in law is 14, taking spring break at home, and lazes around doing nothing. She’s pregnant, and when the MIL leaves, the sister in law never offers to cook food. If she cooks food, the sister in law doesn’t help with prep. After they’re done eating, the sister-in-law never does the dishes. And whenever she buys any snacks and leaves it out in the living room or kitchen, the sister-in-law eats it right away. She complains that her sister in law is so rude! Comments say, “Wow, how terrible. Why don’t you get a divorce?”
A video of a speech at school, where a man warns, “If you can’t get into a good highschool, do you know what’ll happen to you? Your life is basically over. First, if you can’t get into high school, your mom and dad has to pay six figures to get you into a private school. Are you gonna put them through that? You might not even have an official student ID (meaning you can’t partake in national exams to get into college). Secondly, if you go to trade school, community college, or 3+2 trade school plus community college, do you know how much you’ll get fucked? You might not even get a graduation certificate at the end of the day. Thirdly, once you’re in society, your family is only of average standing and you don’t want to work hard on yourself, you can only work the lowliest of jobs—sweat shops, delivery driver, construction work, hair dresser, cook. Can you be successful in these jobs? Maybe. But it’ll be a thousand times harder than studying right now. Maybe tens of thousands of times harder. You’ll regret your irresponsibility and laziness and disobedience within three years. You think studying is pointless while you’re in school. It’s not until you’re in society that you find you haven’t studied nearly enough. If you don’t believe me, just wait and see.” The field of students are all bent over, crying. The blogger who reposted the video asks what people think of terrifying students as a form of motivation?
Comments say, “He’s not terrifying them. He’s just telling them the truth.”
The Chinese Legal Affairs Commission has come out to make a statement about the Zhang Ji Ke gambling debt incident as it starts going viral on weibo. It’s sat steadily in the top 10 trending topics, and the whole of the internet is hanging onto every new development like the latest update of a soap opera. But that can’t be the attitude of the relevant legal departments. They must shoulder on their responsibility so the chaos on the internet can get cleaned up.
First, they need to investigate whether there has been a crime. The trending posts are all saying, “allegedly” and “possibly criminal”, but this incident has gotten far beyond the realm of, “If no citizens complain, the government turns a blind eye too”. It’s important to maintain the trust in the justice system to quickly investigate whether there have been illegal behaviour. Everyone is legal in front of the law. No one will be let go because of their status. Sentences need to be passed down and clarifying statements need to be made. This is what everyone is expecting from the law, and this expectation needs to be met.
Second, they need to investigate whether there are people spreading rumours. Obviously, illegal behaviour needs to be prosecuted. But spreading rumours can’t be tolerated either. Only revealing the whole truth can bring closure to this whole event. And no one should have to suffer false accusations. Whether or not something is the last nail in the coffin needs to be determined after hearing both sides of the story. When everyone is sticking to their version of events, the justice system needs to stand out and determine the truth with concrete material evidence. And if there is rumour-making, then the rumour spreader needs to pay the price. This is the ideal everyone has for the law, and this ideal needs to be met.
Third, they need to investigate whether there are people making a bigger deal out of this than it is. Every time something goes viral, there are people pushing it from behind, whether out of sheer curiosity, or just venting their pent up frustrations at an acceptable target, or even to get more followers by jumping on the bandwagon. These people keep a topic hot and trending far beyond anyone’s tolerance for it, and a stop needs to be put to them. Trending topics need to cool down as the justice system intervenes, people should gain closure from the conclusion of sentencing. This is the wish of the internet, and this wish needs to be met.
An askreddit, “Can a 140 pound human really take on a 70 pound wolf?” The comments say, “All the people saying it’s not possible—do you have PMS or something? It’s not like you’re taking on a 200 pound North American grey wolf.”
The replies say, “Dude, I’m not exaggerating. When you’re actually facing down a 70 pound wolf, you’ll see that PMS is just a joke. Wolves are a hell of a lot faster than you. And they’ll tire you out before they go for the throat.”
The reply under that says, “70 pound is just a large dog. Large dogs aren’t even higher than my thigh. Why the hell would I be scared of that?”
A blogger writes, “This society is sick. Just rcently, in front of the doors to a bank, a middle-aged lady suddenly fell. A whole crowd was watching, and no one made a move.”
”So this lady kept laying there, her head slumped on the lower step of the staircase, motionless. If someone would help he up, maybe she would’ve recovered quickly. If she was taken to a hospital in time, she probably would’ve made it.”
“But now, she’s probably already dead from asphyxiation.”
“The crowd watching have taken off their masks and lit a cigarette, and they continue watching her motionless body. Time grinds to a stop.”
“No one dares to risk helping.”
“Why? This used to be so simple. Why is it so hard now? Should you help someone? How do you help people? What are people supposed to do? Does anyone have any ideas?”
Comments say, “What’s wrong is the law. The fault is with the judges. You can’t blame the onlookers for being cold-hearted. Their hearts weren’t frozen in just a day or two.”
A childcare blogger writes, “I saw a video this morning of a mother making dumplings with her kiddo. The kiddo says that a classmate said to him that his shoes look girly. The mother asks, “Did that make you upset?” The kiddo nods. And the mother uses the dumplings to teach the kiddo the difference between a fact and an opinion. “This is a dumpling” is a fact. “Dumplings are tastier than rice” is an opinion. Opinions are what other people think, but they’re not facts. We shouldn’t be upset about other people’s opinions, because they’re not true anyways. The kiddo ended up making a perfect reply at the end too—that he would talk to the other kid and tell them that these shoes being girly is just their opinion, he likes them anyways.
I’ve taught my children the same thing too, but after a few years, I discovered that this education is very incomplete and imperfect. So what if it’s an opinion and not a fact? Can’t we get upset over other people’s opinions? Is my upsetness somehow wrong? Mommy’s first reaction is to defeat me with logic and tell me that there’s no need to be upset, but nonetheless, I am in fact very upset. Why doesn’t she understand that?
If you change the scenario to your best friend talking to you instead of your kid, the answer becomes a lot clearer. If your best friend told you her boyfriend was late to their date, and she’s very upset, what is your first reaction? You wouldn’t tell your best friend that that’s just her opinion, it’s not a fact, your boyfriend actually loves you quite a lot, being late once or twice doesn’t mean anything. What kind of asshole move is that to completely trivialise someone’s feelings? When a kiddo complains about something like that, he’s not looking for his mom to logic away his emotions, he’s not wanting to hear a big long story about the right way to deal with things. He just wants empathy.
I was talking to my best friend today, in fact, about how a lot of communication between parent and child seems perfectly fine at first glance, because people just assume that conversation between parent and kid is necessarily the parent teaching the kid something. The kid thinks the lesson through, learns something from it, and does away with a bad habit. But if you translate that into an equal relationship, you see the problem right away. Adults are in way too much of a hurry and get concerned over their extrapolations in their imagination and feel the need to root out anything that might be even the shadow of the hint of something bad.
Everyone is constantly worried about their kids having negative emotions, but negative emotions are healthy. They’re a natural part of the emotional spectrum. We shouldn’t be suppressing it down with logic and morals.
At the end of the video, the kiddo said that he won’t let other people’s opinions affect his mood, but is that how he actually feels? Can anyone really not let other people’s opinions affect them at all? Or is it that the next time he gets emotions from other people’s opinions, he’ll start obsessing to himself that he’s doing something wrong, that he doesn’t have control over himself, and forcing himself into a negative emotional loop?
What he needs to learn is that his emotions are natural, they’re not problematic, he doesn’t need to be ashamed about them. Only then can he confront them face on, analyse where these emotions come from, and learn how to process them. If you deny his emotions right off the bat, you’re robbing him of the ability to face them himself.
Why is it the fault of judges that no one helped the lady on the pavement?