I nearly posted this as my Facebook status, then decided that it wasn’t a good idea. I don’t think it’s actually about being diabetic; I think it’s more about the mass-hysteria way in which a particular issue can get prioritised as by far the most appalling due to media prompting and a certain critical mass response, whether it’s the horror of cancer, hunger in Africa, or paedophilia (which, in one poll a few years back, more Britons wanted the death penalty for than murder. Definitely a worse indictment of humanity than cancer sufferer memes). Anyway, for the record and as some kind of compromise rather than deleting it altogether, here’s what I haven’t posted onto wider-distribution social media because it would only lead to more muck-slinging that can’t help anyone:
I am fed up of memes along the lines of ‘if you don’t repost this random photo of a person having lost all their hair to chemotherapy, you’re a selfish pig with no soul’. (a) I just don’t repost memes. Not part of what I can be bothered to use social media for. (b) they usually contain grotesque language errors, besides being self-righteous and offensive. (c) people get over cancer. Obviously not all people, but some do. I have a disease (type 1 diabetes) which I will never get over and which medical science has not yet found out how to cure or even put into remission – the outcomes are either I manage it well enough that something else kills me before the complications do (and I’m of the first generation at all likely to live out a fairly normal lifespan with the condition), or, well, the other way round (it can get me lots of ways, and potentially take my sight / kidneys / feet / various other body parts and functions on the way). Yet I have never encountered a fundraising campaign, ad series, sponsored event, charity (though I think there is one) or sickening attempted-guilt-trip-inducing meme aimed at supporting type 1 diabetics. And, with obviously the exception of this status massively falling off the wagon, you don’t catch me bitchin’ much. Even if I did, I’d rather you did something concrete like donated some money to medical research than changed your f’ing Facebook status for 24 hours.