What’s going on? Is it something to do with it being Valentine’s day this week that has got everybody riled up? Currently FOUR of my friends have Facebook status’ saying “[name] is sorry”. Well OK, three say that, the other one says “[name] is really really sorry”. I put them all in a Facebook ‘list’ just so I could take a screenshot and show everyone:
OK to be honest there were only three of those statuses when I changed my own Facebook status to “Beth is wondering why THREE of her friends have statuses saying “***** is sorry”. Another one appeared after that, possibly influenced by mine to freak me out.
So you all know about Facebook lists now don’t you? You can make a list out of any selection of your friends and name it whatever you like, and use that to interact with those people as a group, kind of like a mailing list. But so far I’ve just used it to make a list of all my friends who I’ve kissed, for my own amusement, just to see how many it would be. No, I’m not telling you the number. I really hope that my list isn’t accidentally made public by Facebook, and that people in that list don’t know that I’ve added them to it… as far as I know, lists are for my eyes only…!
*EDIT* OK my friend Claire just explained –
Hey ya! Have you been bombarded with responses to this yet? The “sorry”s would be from your Aussie friends who are supporting the historic event taking place right now – the new Government is formally apologising to the indigenous people for the Stolen Generation – when children were taken from their families and put into white schools and families. Check www.theage.com.au for more details. It’s a great day!
Ah OK I see. I still think it’s a bit of a weird thing to put on your Facebook though. Like, fair enough it’s really sick what British/Australians did to Aborigines, but my friends themselves didn’t do anything wrong, so why are they saying sorry? I get that you should pay respect to groups of people who have been oppressed, and try to better their situation now, but if you’ve never done any oppressing yourself, as an individual, why are you saying sorry?
3 responses to “A sorry state”
I have been in touch with ebay over worldsky. I was told on the Live help line that they looked into it and clealry eworldsky is violating ebay policies and needs to be suspended. The live chat line informed me they were reporting eworldsky and he would be suspended. However I persisted in trying to find out what they were going to do and the final answer was nothing. As such since ebay is not protecting their accounts from online fraud and abuse I closed my ebay account. I think I will be trying amazon.
Yeah, I guess it’s like when someone’s Grandma dies and you say “Oh, I’m sorry”. Obviously you’re not claiming responsibility, you’re just expressing empathy, like you said.
It’s a supportive thing. The word has been really contentious here as John Howard refused to say it. People have been signing “sorry” books and stuff for years as that is what the Stolen Generation really wanted. I think it’s more like empathy than a feeling of responsibility for what happened. The new prime minister apologised for the actions of the governments though which is good.