Tweet: ‘Crying because I’m not getting a car for Christmas’
While the holiday theme song for about 12 million unemployed people this year might as well have been “All I want for Christmas is a job,” that has never stopped the young and/or clueless from taking to Twitter with their own, less sympathetic ballad: “All I wanted for Christmas was an iPad.”
And when they tweet of disappointment for not getting the latest, expensive Apple gadget or (cue “The Price Is Right” voice) “A NEW CAAAR!”, they are often met with unexpected, widespread hatred in return. It’s like a bizarro online Christmas for bloggers where their present is documenting ungrateful Christmas whining for the world to see, unleashing a disproportionate, and often expletive-filled wave of backlash to the complaining person in return.
A good example would be from @josephreyess, who built up to the moment of his world collapsing by counting down to 12 a.m. Christmas morning. He started with tweets of “5 more minutes,” then “2 more minutes.” Then, at 12:07 a.m. EST, came the disappointment.
“Well I guess I didnt (sic) get my much wanted iphone. [expletive] my [expletive] life and every [expletive] thing in it,” he wrote.
Another Twitter user, @ebrianne17 who calls herself “Majesty,” tweeted on Christmas Eve, “and my mom went directly against me. she asked me if I wanted the black or white iPad. I said white, of course. tell me why mine is black..?”
Justin Bieber fan @Jaimeeloves wrote three days before Christmas “Crying because I’m not getting a car for Christmas. [expletive] you santa.”
In each case, the response from the Twitterverse was swift, and harsh. Thanks to hundreds of people reposting to their comments, strangers near and far chastised them him for being ungrateful and followed that up with personal insults.
Now, I don’t condone the extreme vitriol these iGadget-less Christmas revelers receive for their complaints -- after all, most are young, even teenagers, and haven’t yet realized that it’s become a holiday tradition for others to seek out their most egregiously out-of-touch comments. But perhaps if this happens enough, the whiners among us will either realize they should watch what they say in social media -- where it is far too easy and common for people to speak before thinking -- or even better, they’ll remind themselves before typing out that 140 character whine that they should be grateful for what they have. After all, if you have the means to go on Twitter, it could be worse, right?
Many of the Twitter complainers were defiant, pridefully calling themselves spoiled, but Joseph Reyes was one of those who appeared to have learned. He wrote later on Christmas Day, “Alright I learned my lesson, be grateful for the things I have and love my family, can you [people] please stop harassing me now?”
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