Heather Christena Schmidt

Does anyone remember when people used to do that super annoying Facebook status thing, where they’d post a daily thing they’re thankful for every day in the month of November, leading up to Thanksgiving?

If you aren’t from America, perhaps you’ve been spared this glad-handed way of humble-bragging that people used to do. You, dear international friends, were the real fortunate ones.

It went like this:

So and so person you are connected with on Facebook, whom you maybe passed once in the hallway while in high school over 15 years ago: “November 4th, Day 4…catching up as I missed days 2 and 3, but I am SO grateful for my wonderful family, my amazing husband, and my intelligence – without which I wouldn’t have all the career opportunities it has afforded me.”

I’m not kidding you people, so many of my Facebook “friends” would post some narcissistic nonsense about how smart they were or how talented God made them. I. Shit. You. Not. The rest of their days of gratitude were filled with all the other banal details of their lives, like their suburban homes, or their “married to my best friend” spouses. And, naturally, the month was capped off with a barrage of material possessions God has bestowed upon them.

Fucking gag, I know.

A few years ago, when it had reached a fever pitch – and anyone who’s anyone on Facebook was doing this – I wrote a blog post about it. And relentlessly made fun of people that did it on social media.

I also, for a while, posted daily things I was ungrateful for. Like famine and foreign wars, and Ebola and HIV. And homelessness in my own community, and the 33% of children in my own town that live in poverty. Naturally, they went over like a lead balloon.

As I sit here today, though, and realize that this little gratitude for one month of an entire year thing is over, I can only hope I played a part in the demise of this nationwide trend.

Failing my participation in taking down this atrocious behavior, I have a few other theories about why this November-exclusive-public-declaration-of-thankfulness came to a sudden and screeching halt. (And if you’re thinking that I have a lot of time on my hands to be coming up with these theories, you would be right.)

No one has any interest in feigning gratitude anymore.

Look. We all know that very few of us wake up in the morning, stretch, take a look around our surroundings, and then ponder all the wonderful things we have in life, and how thankful we are for having them.

Maybe you do it once in a while, but every day? Come on, you can’t play me for that much of a sucker.

There are a few reasons for this. One is that for most people there is no time to sit and ponder dick. Your alarm has been going off for going-on an hour, your kids are jumping on the bed, you have a meeting in 30 minutes, and your morning constitution is already making its way out the back door. No one (except obviously me) has time to sit around and think about anything anymore, which is a damn shame but it’s a product of the times we live in.

Another thing about this all is that as we grow older and the stressors of life start to wear us down, feigning gratitude for some bullshit like a big screen TV seems a little besides the point.

No one posts Facebook statuses that often anymore.

This is not to be confused with suggesting that no one uses Facebook anymore. I know it’s cool to hate social media, and to look down on people that use Facebook regularly; but let’s not beat around the dick here: a lot of people who claim to rarely be on Facebook can be seen as “online” or liking and commenting on shit from sun up to sun down.

That’s not the point anyway. People used to post status updates a lot. I still do, most of the time to make jokes about myself. But to even figure out how to describe a Facebook status update like I did above (So and so’s gratitude post from November 4th), I had to scroll through basically five day’s worth of Newfeed, for at least 15 minutes, and I still hadn’t even hit a status update yet – so said “fuck it” and winged it.

I don’t know about you guys, but my Newsfeed is all News, Blogs, baby photos ad nauseum, and cat and dog videos. Ain’t nobody got time to be posting the things they’re grateful for when there’s a mashup of Adelle’s Hello and someone’s cat leaning over a telephone.

People are grateful, but not for anything they’ll admit to.

Housing assistance. Food stamps. Therapists. Financial aid. Daycare because if you have to watch Calliou one more time you’re going to rip your ears off your head to avoid hearing that kid’s whiney fucking voice ever again.

Life’s rough, and the economy sucks. That doesn’t mean everyone wants to admit that their grateful for relief from it.

Like all Facebook trends, this one just died.

You know Facebook is all about the trends. For a while, during the holidays, it was this thankful daily post thing. Other trends have been: posting long statuses about how people with cancer never get a break from it and 98% of your friends won’t repost that message; sharing recipes and cute holiday crafts instead of recognizing the existence of Pinterest; and, those awareness games like changing your Facebook photo to a child cartoon character, or posting where you like to hang your purse vaguely – as if that will somehow raise awareness for your cause. I could go on, but I won’t…

The newest Facebook trend is to put a colored filter over your Facebook profile photo in support of whatever cause happens to be the thing of the month. When the United States Supreme Court legalized gay marriage through out the country, everyone’s picture had a rainbow over it. After the Paris attacks the other day, it was the French flag. Of course now cases against doing these types of things are starting to crop up, just as they did with the Facebook thankful posts…but you get the point.

Facebook is about the trends, and as all trends go they eventually die.

Don’t get me wrong guys: I’m glad to not see everyone’s daily posts glad-handing their wonderful lives filled with Starbucks coffee and nice cars. Everyone’s posts eventually derailed into that kind of bullshit, and it’s simply because at a point we run out of things to list being thankful for.

I’m not an advocate of being ungrateful for the things you have in your life. But what I am an advocate of is being realistic about the important and unimportant things out there. My husband has a job, and we have a roof over our heads. For those things, I am grateful. We have our health, and that’s wonderful too. Occasionally I’ll post something on social media making that gratitude clear, and I can do so without making a show of doing it every day for just one month of the year; and certainly without using the hashtag #blessed.

But now that no one is posting about what they are thankful for on social media anymore, I can’t help but wonder why.