Doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, what I personally hate about these stories is that it cheapens the act by making it performative or self-congratulatory. If you do a good deed you’re not supposed to talk about it, and certainly not in this overly flowery trash prose.
I’m not religious at all anymore but I lived a significant amount of time in the Bible Belt so you have to steel yourself against religious hypocrites or go insane. So IMO this is one of the good lessons in the Bible, for what it’s worth.
“When you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret."
This is wholesome please be nice
There’s worse things to attention whore about. You could call this setting a good example, too.
The more I think about it, the more I don’t like the mindset that good deeds must be done in secret. People shouldn’t expect anything in return other than appreciation, but I think good deeds do deserve appreciation.
And I’d bet that bit in the bible was actually there to discourage competition and make it look like no one helps each other so the church is more necessary.
As long as people aren’t just making up shit, exaggerating wildly, twisting what happened, or humiliating the people they help.
The good deed doesn’t need to be done in secret. But the person doing the good deed shouldn’t brag about it. Let the person who got the cake post about it if they want. And omg the writing in this post lol, white knuckles on the purse give me a break. Talk about exploitation
Fuck off with the stupid sneezing picture, why is it always the sneezing picture. People can brag all they want, if you dont care then dont listen. At least they did something worth bragging about.
So what do you suggest? The internet, tv, everyday life, etc is full of people doing the wrong thing constantly and being rewarded insanely for it.
Then a person posts a wholesome story that might inspire others to kindness and your response is this?
What a sad world we live in right now.
You kind of need good actions TO BE SEEN. Come on man.
Actually doing good shit instead of making up bullshit stories on the internet would be a fantastic start. Maybe not spend half the post glazing themselves too.
“What do you suggest?”
… to do good deeds without announcing them. I thought it was pretty clear from the post.
So you punch down at anyone who dares to be inspired by a feel good story?
You think you’re helping?
You’re not. The only thing you’re doing is giving people who see your opinion another reason to only think of themselves.
Punching down? I am helping. You didn’t seem to understand from the post that the OP was suggesting you just do good deeds and NOT post about them online.
Get pissed cuz I’m answering YOUR question lol
“don’t let perfect be the enemy of good”
No. You don’t.
You’re not a good person if you need it to be acknowledged by others. That’s precisely what leads to perverse performative behaviors, and stupid shit like volentourism, where everyone is being exploited to generate a image for the customer that they have done something selfless and good for someone else, when all it’s done is line the pockets of the people who run those orgs.
Frankly, I quite a volunteer org two years ago because they decided the good they were doing had to be acknowledged publicly, and they should get money, and the people involved should get a cut of that money… oh and we should only help the ‘most unfortunate’ people because that will score us more points/money… that’s no longer volunteering. That’s your typical capitalism mindset in a non-profit coating. Don’t do things for people unless you can get maximum return from your effort…
So we just assume the intention is always malice.
That’s an exhausting way to live
you’re the one who can’t think in anything other than absolutes.
I think you really believe that the world is as black and white as you think it is.
Good luck with that.
Doing a good deed and telling someone about it because it made you and someone else feel good is not an inherently bad thing and you clearly lack the nuance to understand any different.
I feel bad for you.
cool, i feel bad for you that nothing has any value unless you can brag about it to someone else.
Eh, if we are being cynical then we could extrapolate that same cynicism to conclude that there is no such thing as altruism. That any act of kindness is actually motivated by self interest, whether that be being seeking external praise for their deeds or just internal self-aggrandizement.
At the end of the day does the motivation for the good deed really matter? Or is it just more important that a little girl had a great birthday when she may have not been able otherwise. Exploitation is defined by its harm to the person being exploited. If the baker took a picture or named the mother and that led to public shame, then yeah that could be exploitative.
Without anyone experiencing harm in this hypothetical scenario, I don’t really see a reason to think negatively about the situation. It just runs against your subjective preconceived notions of what defines a “good person”, and in reality that’s not really an objective thing you could actually measure.
You get those stories from the mother posting about how a bakery did this really nice thing for her.
From my perspective, if someone advertises that they did <nice thing> then it’s just ad spend. Give them kudos for spending a portion of their marketing budget on charity rather than just commercials, but it is still marketing. This can apply to individuals building up their social reputation too.
So we should do good deeds in complete silence and just hope that someone notices.
I hate to break it you guys but that’s not working anymore. It hasn’t for decades.
no. the fact you want someone to notice robs the good deed of it’s goodness.
because you only did it for your own selfish gain. you’re so selfish that you can’t conceive of doing good without it being recognized as it’s own reward.
But don’t worry, that’s ‘normal’. in our society. in our society, doing something without it having value to yourself is considered a mental illness, because we have so internalized capitalism and greed, you can’t even conceive of not gaining something from doing something for someone else
and hence why we live in brutally transactional world, and why everyone cries about how relationships and community is falling apart… because they don’t see any point unless THEY get something out of it.
Naw dawg, when I do a good thing I want people to notice. Not so that I get a reward or social credit for doing something nice. Fuck that. I want to normalize doing nice things. I want people to talk about the nice thing I did, then when they have a chance to do something nice they remember me and pass it forward. I want someone else to benefit from my kindness and for that act of kindness to propagate forward.
Every sentence there is about you making yourself feel good.
None if it, is about how the other people feel.
No, it’s about them wanting other people to do good things, and trying to encourage that by example. And I think they have a point - it’s hard to model a behavior when nobody is aware of it, and it’s hard to normalize a behavior nobody talks about
There is no such thing as a selfless good deed. We’re social animals. We feel GOOD when people around us feel GOOD. We’re intelligent animals. We notice this pattern and conclude that if we make another person feel good, WE’LL feel good too. This is virtuous.
Sharing good deeds make them feel NORMAL and people like to follow the standards for normal behaviour to fit in. This creates a virtuous circle.
Sure some people only do a good deed to advertise it because they’ll get more capital out of it than the cost of the deed. But that’s not what’s happening here. I don’t know the store or the owner, they get nothing from me.
Exactly.
Saw a couple of kids recently gather some litter off the ground and throw it away.
Myself and a few other people noticed and gave those kids major props.
We need to encourage civility for everyone’s sake.
You can say that about anything. This is a very philosophical thought but why do we act and do good deeds? There is an argument to be made that people only do good things so they feel better about themselves. But I don’t think you have to see this so one-dimensional. Both people can feel good. Do you think the mother is upset that this worker might have written about this genuinely nice story so it invalidates ones actions? Even if they were sincere?
I really don’t believe you can ever do anything fully unconditional even if you say so. But win-wins exist. Trump would argue when one side wins another must lose. I don’t believe in this.
What world do we live in where we shame people for sharing stories about kind acts? What do you want from the internet? Only trash? Only news and politics? Your view of the world is a very dark one and one I wish to never adopt.
No, I want truth and critical discourse.
Which to the vast majority of users here, is trash. Because they see the world in one dimension and can’t acknowledge other people’s differences as anything more than evil that must be stamped out.
Which for you, you can’t have truth or discussion without shaming other people I guess? Hence your need to frame my talking points as shaming people and my view must be very dark and awful.
I see my views as positive, liberating, and optimistic. Because I think cutting out the subject feely weely fictional bullshit of life is what makes it worth living, and yeah I understand for other people, that is terrifying and scary and awful, because for them all life is is the feely weely bullshit and they are terrified of a world that isn’t entirely composed of it, especially people like Trump.
I’d go so far to argue most of the posters on here are far more like Trump, than they are different than him, in that they want a world that is nothing more than a mirror-reflection of their own egoistical assumptions, and is totally allergic to any objectivity or truth that may upset them, and think any such idea or person espousing such idea is EVIL and BAD.
Okay then answer me if humans a unconditionally do anything really? If you do something nice and feel better afterwards you gain something from it. So what is something people do by volition without them benefiting in any way shape or form
No it doesn’t. If you do it specifically for clout, that is not a good deed. But doing a good deed and then telling others about it because it made you feel good isn’t.
I have no idea who this person is. I have no idea if this is true. But i need to at least think there are people like this in the world. Especially right now. So I NEED stories like this.
There are people like this in the world. Believe that. I can’t count the number of times people have helped me out of the blue, randomly, without prodding, when I’ve been seriously down on my luck. Empathy is one of the most primal human emotions. Only psychopaths lack it.
Because you spend too much time on social media.
Go to a local baseball game for kids and watch people coach kids. You’ll see it happen regularly. But you won’t, and you don’t.
So you’d rather cling to these weird dramatic social media posts instead of be involved the boring nonsense of the everyday world that isn’t as dramatic.
yeah but then I’ll see those same people try to run a cyclist off the road twenty minutes later because they didn’t ride in the gutter filled with bottle glass
Well aren’t you just a lovely person.
Honestly, if it gets people to be kind, do it. But do it genuinely. Help people and brag, but don’t exploit them. I volunteer, I post about it all the time, but I’d still go even if I wasn’t posting, I really don’t care about the clout.
Help one another, show others your good deed. But don’t do it for clout, do it because it’s the right thing to do.
Amen brother. But this is the society we live in, everything is only worth doing if you get something out of it.
And we bitch and whine about how we treat each other… well this is how we treat each other. Your sob story has no merit unless I can use it to make me feel good about myself or get internet fame for it. Otherwise… fuck you you loser.
Frankly I am socially isolating myself because this performative bullshit hypocrisy is so rife, even among the atheist liberals. Everyone wants to incessantly brag how amazing they are because they did something nice once for someone, which was really trivial act… and often use it to justify their own selfish choices.
I´m not sure whether you´re a bot or not, insisting on spreading negativity on your every comment. And there are many. To any humans reading this: Please don´t let moron bots like this stop you from believing in the goodness of humanity.
There’s merit in “do good and talk about it”. Public sentiment is very dependent on that.
There’s an argument to be made that this kind of story inspires more people to go good things in ways that they may simply not have thought of otherwise.
And also, there’s a difference between a video that its edited etc. and someone just recounting what happened to share the moment.
This is feel good liberal shit that changes nothing.
Democratic socialism would prioritise the wellbeing of people so they could afford to buy their own cake.
It’s not one thing or another. We can and should encourage acts of kindness like this.
I agree but neoliberals view this as a substitute for decent pay and living conditions.
The good old orphan crushing machine
Heh, “She had walked here”, and that’s a sign of poverty. Tell me you’re American without saying you’re American.
Walking there in the rain with shoes that absorb water is, even in places without the car culture of the US.
Or it’s a sign of lack of planning, but that doesn’t fit as well with the rest of the situation.
Or an advertisement for a certain popular YouTube shoe company
Well sure, but given the community, I’m commenting under the assumption that this is genuine.
actually had me until the last part
I don’t know if a world in which this is fake is better or not
Whole lotta “nothing ever happens” in the comments.
They won’t drop their cynicism out of fear of being fooled. They were fooled once or twice, it felt bad man, and now they over-compensate. To be fair, for some people this is the best course. If they can’t tell truth from fiction, it’s safer to assume most things are bullshit. It’s the low tolerance for risk, low reward group.
For something like this, there’s so little risk, there’s no reason not to just believe it, where’s the harm? Well, feeling foolish is hard to swallow for some people, especially young people.
or we just don’t see the world in such absurd hyperbole of either being a niavely optimistic or darkly cynical.
almost as if the world is just people being people, and the bakery owner could also be abuser her kids at home while she gives out free cupcakes to poor moms at the bakery.
crazy idea, i know. that the world is complex and people are too. that people can be really good in one moment, and absolute monsters in the next… or is that kinda too scary/hard to comprehend… so you they have to be ONE way or the OTHER.
Motherfuckers won’t lemmy be wholesome! 😤
A Facebook copypasta post designed to promote engagement and then regurgitated on twitter is not really my definition of wholesome.
Your MOM’S a Facebook copypasta designed to promote engagement and then regurgitated on Twitter!
my mom is too stupid to know how to use facebook.
so she watches fox news instead.
Come on, lady. Not at the croissant tray! Geez.
The best charity doesn’t look like charity
I will take “Shit That Did Not Happen” for 300 Alex.
Christ on a bike pal would it kill you to have a little whimsy in your life?
How is any of this bleak self congratulatory bullshit whimsy?
whimsy would be a post about how a butterfly landed on your dogs nose and it sneezed it off.
The whimsy is your ability to go “This is nice, I enjoy having some small hope that not everyone is a heartless shitheel.”
Instead of immediately personifying the ‘nothing ever happens’ meme, and deciding that spreading your opinion like a pair of cheeks to shit on what is potentially just a nice story about someone doing a nice thing, is more important than doing literally anything else.
If you can’t read that story and immediately flag it as fake you need to work on yourself. I would consider whoever made this shit up and posted instead of actually doing good in the world to be a heartless shitheel.
you realize that your yum is someone else yuck, right?
and them reporting that, and ruining your day, is your problem, not theirs.
I don’t like sports man. Every sports fan I meet and I say I’m not into sports, acts like I kicked them in the kidney and I’m the asshole. It never occurs to them that… maybe other people just don’t like sports and that’s fine and it’s not a personal insult against them as a person.
But please lecture me more how my perspective ruins your day or something, because you only want to think happy thoughts and regard critical thoughts as heresy or something.
Why does this story generate so much sympathy on here for the person instead of fiery rage against the social system that enables this?
Why should a small entrepreneur have to give away their products out of good will instead of society enabling everyone to buy a few cupcakes once a year?
Why socialise the problems for the many while promoting private profits for the few?
To be honest, I’m so full of rage at the system and the people who prop it up that every so often I just need to let myself feel happy and proud of the people who live in said system and help to starve it, not feed it.
Absolutely there are people who like it because it helps validate their shitty positions but there are also people who just need a win to keep them going in pushing back. It helps to know that your anger is not a lonely anger, that your need for justice is not unique and small.
Because we all need a mental break once in a while. Those of us that care and understand are exhausted by little Timmy’s lemonade stand to pay for his dad’s cancer treatment, Susie’s cupcake drive to help with mom’s insulin bills, a gofundme to help pay for someone’s unexpected disability, or just about every infuriating event where people paint glowing pictures like this to signal the virtue of the hard worker engaging in the grind to grace someone with survival rather than be enraged at the failure of society that necessitates child labor or social largesse to pay for someone’s continued life and liberty.
It’s fucked up. I hate that I have a government that would piss away trillions on bombs and Sturmabteilung killing people rather than invest in the citizens so someone of any age can afford insulin, or a cake or piñata for a kid’s birthday.
So allow us to shed a tear over a potentially apocryphal story where someone’s life is better for just a moment thanks to a person who expected nothing in return.
This is me. On the one hand, I am filled with rage that we have a society where a young mother can’t even afford a nice birthday for her kid, where the first part is the sort of story I witnessed over and over when I was in retail. On the other hand, this sort of story, even if it’s embellished or untrue, lets me hold hope for at least a moment that there’s good in this world worth fighting for.
the vast majority of your fellow citizens aren’t. they have more voting power than you
and they like this way.
Regarding this post, I’m mostly just pissed that an obviously fake story got posted and is being treated as if it was real.
because people want to feel good, not bad.
and if you try to make them feel bad, they will simple hate you.
Because there wouldn’t be a ruling class if it were different.
Because we cannot forget to pull one another up when we have a higher perch.
Yeah, we still need prosocial behaviors on the individual level regardless of what wider economic system we have.
The use praise for prosocial behaviors as an excuse for a broken system is mostly a third world problem, with the USA at the helm.
A small business like a bakery is still within a community. Massive corporations are not.
It’s called the orphan crushing machine.
People celebrate that one orphan has been saved from being crushed by the orphan crushing machine. No one questions that we have an orphan crushing machine. No one acknowledges that the machine is of our own creation. No one realizes that we could stop and dismantle the machine at any point. Because we have always had an orphan crushing machine. There’s a prophecy that we will lose everything and it will all collapse if the orphan crushing machine is stopped. The prophecy was written by those who made the machine.
So people celebrate one orphan was saved, but how dare you suggest we dismantle the orphan crushing machine. So it goes unacknowledged.
you suppose there is a world in which no such machine could ever exist.
there isn’t. this is simple a throught experiment.
in the real world there will always be poverty, and there are plenty of folks in the real world who tell you they are in poverty, when they are not.
Oh no, the machine is not poverty. If you think the machine refers to poverty you don’t understand the metaphor.
As people all too familiar with The Orphan Crushing Machine, it’s nice reading a plausible story about one person acting against its grain.
It’s okay though. The very next story on the feed is probably focused on the machine itself - probably something about a capacity increase, or new motors or blades.
everybody walk the dinosaur
“Thank you for making MY MOMMY happy”? Ungrateful brat! YOU were supposed to be happy about the soggy cake she carried through the rain. I know you wanted a vanilla cupcake instead, but you can’t make demands while being poor. At least your mommy was able to sell half of it to the neighbours to get you paper and crayons for your pathetic message. Now fuck off. Geeze.
I could believe this story until the card wasn’t just a thank you.
The wealth in this post is far more than any billionaire could ever muster.
I hope we find our way back to humanity before its too late.
We’re all still here. We’ve just been duped into letting the wrong people run the show.
