Not too long ago, there were several pictures of severely injured people or innately handicapped children posted and spread through Facebook, with the caption of 1 Like=1$.Some people choose to ignore, some people choose to “like” them, some people believe there are actual donations being given, and some put faith in the belief that they are not real. It makes us think: Are there actual donations being given? If there are, is giving donations according to the amount of “Likes” the right thing to do?

Regarding the two questions above, many people might answer them with another question: “If there is money being donated, what is the problem? How bad could it be?” The fact that there is actually financial support being given to those people sounds really great. However, what is not great is that there is a deeper concern within this matter.

People who post those images have the dedication to donate a certain amount of money and hence they should have the money with them already. Therefore, they should not be wasting time with the images to get attention on Facebook. Instead, they should donate their money as soon as possible because many patients could die at any second. With that being said, you do not see global charity organizations such as the Red Cross or United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) posting pictures on Facebook saying “1Like = 1$.”

   
 
That is not to mention the hidden ruthlessness of “1 Like = 1$.” This statement implies that the donations are being given to those patients according to the amount of “Likes” the image gets. In other words, no matter how critical a patient’s condition is, he or she might not get enough donations to get the necessary medical treatment. Imagine how excruciatingly cruel it is for a doctor to say, “Sorry, but your son cannot get the treatment because his pictures did not get enough ‘likes’.”

If there are no donations at all, which is the assumption that most of the general public tend to believe, it causes even more problems. In many cases, those images of severely injured people are often being posted online without the consent of the patients. This means they might not want their pictures to be posted online. This is not to mention the fact that we have no idea how they would feel about sympathy from people that they have never met.

Some people might say that posting those images could increase some social awareness of the issues of severely injured people or innately disabled children. However, unlike the issue of stray dogs or the campaign of “adopt instead of buying dogs,” increasing social awareness does not solve the matter in question. Therefore, before posting those images, people should consider how they would feel if they put themselves in those people’s shoes. What would you feel if somebody posted a picture of you being injured on Facebook and tens of thousands of people who you do not know see it?

What could be a fundamental solution for this matter? One of them is stop clicking “Like” or sharing those image posts since they are not legally offensive and therefore cannot rely on the law to stop them. People need to realize that no matter if there are actual donations being given to those patients or not, posting those images is not reasonable or humane. Also, people should consider whether the action of posting those images is okay to be left alone if people who post them are solely using them as an attention grabber, or trying to publicize the organizations they are representing? The answer should not be too difficult.

   
 

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