Resistance Is Futile

One of two things needs to happen.

1. I need to quit Facebook.

2. I need to stop clicking on cliffhanger stories.

Anyone who's spent any amount of time of FB knows about clickbait. And that it's stupid to fall for it. Hopefully, y'all are smarter than I am, because I've had to learn the lesson more than once. 

Last night was the latest, but I swear, as God is my witness, I'll never click on clickbait again.

I'm sure when you hear my story you'll understand. Or you'll mock me. But I won't be there to hear you cackling, so whatever.

Anyhow, here goes. There was a headline that said something like, "A Mother Is Stunned When She Finds Out What Her Daughter Threw Out of Her Car Window." The accompanying video clip showed a garbage bag in the middle of the road, and it was moving like there was a living creature inside.

Ya, I took the bait. Stupid me.

As Mr. Ginley will attest, I'm not the most patient person in the world. I scrolled and skimmed through the story, which dragged on and on and on (much like this sentence). When I finally reached the end, it turns out the thing in the bag was one of those lifelike baby dolls they use to teach teenagers why they don't want to get pregnant. 

The kicker was, at the very end, it admitted the story was fiction. 

Yep, really, really bad fiction.

So, aside from five minutes of my life that will never come this way again, what's the harm in clicking on it? 

I'm sure that for the foreseeable future, all kinds of weird stories will show up in my FB feed, begging to be clicked. 

But I'm better than that now. I don't care if I see a snippet of video of an eagle being rescued from fishing line. Or a teaser about what happened to child stars of yore. Or how ugly things can get at your local Wal-Mart.

Nope. Nope. Nope. 

Time to read a book instead. At least if it's fiction, I'll know ahead of time.

And if I lose patience, I can always turn to the last page to find out what happens. 

Photo attribution: Hope Hampton Productions / Paramount Pictures, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons