There's one born every minute

You know what I hate?

Well, yes, stupid people, drivers of black MR2s that sit right up my trumpet going down the A45 this morning, haggis, gardening, chavs, pikies, people with whiny voices, people who eat noisily, shellfish, fruit in curries, drawn-on eyebrows, carrying so many plastic shopping bags that your finger-ends go white, other people's children and the French.

OK, no-one could have expected any of you guys to know that entire list, or the fact that what I'm about to waffle on about isn't actually on it.

At this precise moment in time, the thing that I hate more than anything in the Western World are things like this:

I've blanked out the poor kid's face for a couple of reasons...

1) No-one except possibly a facio-maxillary surgeon really wants to look at a picture of a child that's allegedly been shot in the face.
2) The privacy of the portrayed individual.
3) I have no idea whether this picture is actually of the person described in the text.
4) I have no idea whether the incident described in the text actually happened.

You'll notice that I haven't blanked out the person who posted this originally, as he knowingly posted this update (but without the face obscured, obvs.) and is therefore happy to have his face spattered all over the Internet.

Please note, I, at no point suggest that Mr Gunzmore, who I assume, from his Facebook page, is some kind of up-and-coming rap star, is using this image as some kind of sordid and heartless advertising tool.

So, what do I particularly hate about it?

Well, apart from the things that I enumerated above, and the fact that it's entirely posted in CAPITAL LETTERS and that the grammar is, quite simply, appalling... Let me post the entire text below, for those trying to read it on mobile devices:

-oOo-

14 YEAR OLD BOY WAS SHOT 6 TIMES BY HIS STEPFATHER . THIS BOY WAS PROTECTING HIS LITTLE 6 YEAR OLD SISTER WHO WAS ABOUT TO BE RAPED BY THIS POOR ... EXCUSE OF A MAN . THE LITTLE GIRL DID NOT GET HURT , THANKS TO HER BRAVE OLDER BROTHER . THEIR MOM WAS AT WORK WHEN THIS HAPPENED . NOW THIS BRAVE YOUNG LITTLE BOY IS FIGHTING FOR HIS LIFE , BUT DOCTORS SAY HE WILL NOT SURVIVE UNLESS HE GETS AN OPERATION WHICH IS COSTLY AND HIS MOM CANNOT PAY .ALL FACE BOOK COMPANIES HAVE AGREED TO DONATE 45 CENTS FOR EVERY TIME SOMEONE POSTS THIS TO THEIR WALL . SO , PLEASE SHARE THIS ON YOUR WALL . SO , THAT TOGETHER WE CAN HELP SAVE THIS BOYS LIFE .I JUST PASSED THIS MESSAGE DOWN AND "SHARE" FOR A LITTLE LIFE#HUMANITY COSTS NOTHING

NB; My post ain't about likes or shares its all about "humanity and charity service"

‪#‎join‬ US ( only if you cool) ;

Stay blessed world - make peace not WAR !

-oOo-

I have removed the gentleman's link to his Facebook page that Gunzmore put in after the 'Join US (only if you [sic] cool)' message, as leaving that in was just a little too sordid even for me.

So, let's see what is actually says (I'm not going to bother putting the word 'allegedly' in after every statement, you just go ahead and imagine I have, OK?)  So, a fourteen year old boy, trying to stop his Stepfather raping his little sister, gets shot six times.  Let's all take a look at the picture... The fact that you can't see any wounds would say to me that all of the damage in in the bit you can't see, i.e. the face.  Now, I have seen what's in the blanked out area - Don't get me wrong, it's not pretty, and a lot of his head is bandaged but it's more the sort of thing you'd expect to see if the child in question had been beaten with a bat.

The picture itself seems to have been taken in an Emergency Room, where even my rudimentary knowledge of the American Health System, backed up with a good five minutes research on Google, says that treatment for immediate life threatening trauma is free, certainly to a child.  Even the most heartless, jobsworth, doctors will not let a child die as a result of a crime because his parents cannot afford to pay for treatment.

And even if they would...

Facebook WILL NOT donate money to causes that are advertised by individuals in this way.  Mark Zuckerberg (who I really shouldn't have to introduce to you if you're reading this... And if you're not, I'm not going to introduce him out of spite.) regularly makes massive donations of his own money and Facebook shares to Charity.

Unless he means all of the fifteen million or so companies that have a Facebook presence? - The Chimping Dandy was never asked to take part, and neither was the company that currently pays my wages, despite having a number of Facebook pages.

So, We'll tot it up shall we?

There's a crime that may not have happened (+1) perpetrated by and on people who may well not exist (+1) and a boy that was certainly injured, but probably wasn't injured in the way described (+1), who definitely would not be allowed to die for financial reasons (+1) who could not be saved by such a plea, because Facebook doesn't operate like that (+1)

If I've added that up correctly, there are five instances of things you can happily call B*llsh*t on in one badly laid out paragraph without even thinking about it too hard.

So, can someone tell me why it has 358,591 likes, 53,573 comments and has been shared 628,657 times? (at the time of writing at least) - Which if it were true would mean that the un-named child would already have received $161,365.95 - If the 'Facebook Companies' just means Facebook itself, or $2,420,489,250,000.00 (Two and a half Trillion Dollars) if every company on Facebook donates 45c for every Like...

And that's only by Mr Gunzmore's share alone... If every one of the 628,657 people that shared it got a couple of likes, not only would we have saved the boy's life, he would now own the entirety of the known universe.

Does any of this seem a little bit unlikely to you yet?

I mean, it's all a lie, but some lies are at least believable aren't they? 

People can say things like 'No, it's perfectly fine that you used my toothbrush to clean the dog's rectum and took two weeks to tell me, I'll just buy a new one, no biggie.' - You might be able to believe the person who said that, if you were very simple, or if the person whose brush you used was a Buddhist Monk, legally and religiously obliged not to kill you with a rusty spoon.

I don't mean to single out Mr Gunzmore, I'm sure that he's a wonderful person who loves his mother very dearly - We've all seen the pictures of babies with lesions from some terrible illness, and young, dehydrated African children covered in flies that they are too weak to wave away.

They're terrible, and it shouldn't happen... But really, liking the image will not help their plight in the slightest, no-one will donate money to some unspecified cause because of you clicking a mouse and then scrolling down to see a picture of a cat asleep in a shoe.

Share them if you must, to raise awareness of the issue, but do me a favour if you will.

Take the time to see if the story that you're promoting is true, check Snopes Which is a great Urban Legend resource and can let you know with a quick search whether you're going to look an idiot when you press 'Post', and think what it is that you're promoting if it says 'For every like we get, 45c will be donated to the cause.'

Promoting a lie makes you a liar, and I know that no-one who reads The Chimping Dandy would admit to being one of those.

So, as a certain training shoe manufacturer may once have almost said, 'Just Don't Do It.'