The Happiest Place on Earth Is A Little Cranky

The other day, I was eating leftover Costco pizza for lunch and scrolling through a Facebook page where Disney lovers discuss Disney and supposedly help each other with tips and advice when a picture someone posted caught my attention.

In it, a lady and a man stand beside a fountain in Epcot, and a kid splashes around in the water. The man watches the child while the woman looks at her phone.

Fountain swimming is frowned upon at Disney, but I wasn’t there and didn’t know the circumstances, so I don't judge. Maybe the kid was overheated? Perhaps the family was from Europe, where swimming in fountains is allowed in certain instances. It could be that they didn’t realize fountain swimming wasn’t the norm in the United States. I gave them the benefit of the doubt. Time to scroll on...  

But then, a few of the comments caught my eye. Here’s a sampling:

• Well, just look at her. What do you expect?  

• You can tell she’s not classy because she’s larger and has tattoos.

• This is why ugly people shouldn’t reproduce.

• We can’t have nice things because of fat, stupid people like them.

• Too bad there wasn’t an alligator in the fountain.

Geez people.  

That is when I should have quietly exited and moved on to other important things, like whether to have that second piece of pizza. Except against my better judgment, I posted three sentences, two of which I thought were legitimate questions: 

I’m not saying swimming in a fountain is right but why shame people on social media? Why not point this out to a cast member and let them handle it? Disney wants you to do that and it would have solved the problem.

Let me say that what followed resembled a blood bath because some people were utterly horrified by my comment:

• They need to be publicly shamed because they are idiots.

• Because people are morons, and if it takes things like this to humiliate them, then so be it.

• Because our job is to make sure idiots are shamed in public so they learn a lesson on how to behave.

• It’s called shaming and it’s deserved when you haven’t been taught
  how to act like an adult or to parent a child.  

• It’s because there needs to be some method to where people feel like
  they SHOULDN’T and follow through with NOT doing things like this.  

• Hopefully, these morons also eventually see this but the least it can do
  is help the future of others NOT BEHAVING LIKE THIS. It’s pathetic.

Perhaps my favorite comment was from the disapproving finger-wag who said: You and your opinion is about as dumb as what the idiots did in the fountain. You’re stupid, you have diarrhea of the mouth and all you want to do is shut people up.

O-RLY?   

Lord, I don't know where to start with all that, but I could have responded with: Well, excuse me, Self-Appointed Disney Facebook Police. You tough-talking keyboard warriors sure put me in my place. My next meal will be a big, thick slice of humble pie. 

Har har har. 

Color me naive, but I was shocked at the number of people on a Disney site (the Happiest Place on Earth, by the way) who believe social media shaming is acceptable and something we should be doing. I’m wincing as I type that because Mind. Blown.

It reminded me of that returning your shopping cart shaming that was happening on the internet a few months ago, where people were deemed the scum of the earth and had their pictures posted on social media for not placing their grocery carts in the proper parking lot receptacle when they were finished with it. I'm not going to get started on that because I'm not in the mood for a pissing match on shopping carts.

There are many good, kind people in the world, but my god, the level of viciousness, infinite anger, disrespect, and mean-spirited comments in the news, on the internet, and in real life lately is...gross.  

I wish we could all do better, respect each other more, and let the little stuff go.

But oh well. Such is life. Oh, and look who forgot to let the little stuff go. I'm disgusted at myself for getting involved in that ridiculous drama. I've got no excuse except to say it was lunchtime; I was bored and thought some people might have thought I was making sense.

Lesson learned.