"Copy and Paste this if you care"

[Kiwipinball]

I generally ignore them, but I think it can make sense to comment if you know this is an issue the poster has been dealing with. As someone else mentioned, I think a lot of people copy and paste because they feel guilty (they're probably also against cancer - most of us are - but it's not necessarily deeply personal), but if it's more personal for whatever reason, showing support is a nice thing (and probably a lot more noticeable than if you actually copy and pasted).

And those awareness campaigns totally spread awareness - of how annoying they are!

[Lula]

When you flood me with idle, spammy "awareness" material on Facebook or elsewhere, you're training my brain's filters to block your cause out as irrelevant background noise, which would seem counterproductive to raising awareness.

[WolfWay]

Yeah, I think they feel like they are contributing something and acting better than others, when in fact all they're doing is spamming, not helping any cause.

That's why it's called "Slactivism". (Slacker Activism. The feel good factor of appearing to do good without actually making a meaningful difference to anything).

[Paws]

Probably showing my techie ignorance here, but what is the value of copy & pasting over sharing? Sharing would seem to be more advantageous.  If your goal is to spread awareness, why eliminate the one-click option?  I don't get it.  Also, with shares, you can at least see at a glance how many people responded.   

I never ever ever respond to these.  The guilting part just infuriates me. 

If I want Facebook attention, I will just post a cat picture :-)

[maksi]

Probably showing my techie ignorance here, but what is the value of copy & pasting over sharing? Sharing would seem to be more advantageous.  If your goal is to spread awareness, why eliminate the one-click option?  I don't get it.  Also, with shares, you can at least see at a glance how many people responded.   

If it's someone's status, it's often private, Friends Only (or someone custom list) and thus won't show to other people. Of course making the status public would spread more "awareness" and then sharing it would be "enough"...

[artk2002]

Probably showing my techie ignorance here, but what is the value of copy & pasting over sharing? Sharing would seem to be more advantageous.  If your goal is to spread awareness, why eliminate the one-click option?  I don't get it.  Also, with shares, you can at least see at a glance how many people responded.   

If it's someone's status, it's often private, Friends Only (or someone custom list) and thus won't show to other people. Of course making the status public would spread more "awareness" and then sharing it would be "enough"...

For possibly controversial posts, it also mutes the "heckler's veto." It's very common for groups offended by something to go on a reporting campaign with FB. FB can pull the post and if shared, all of the shares will go away as well. It's a lot harder to do that with copy-and-paste because there's no link. FB isn't very good with enforcing their "community standards" and some fairly innocuous stuff can still get banned by a dedicated crew of trolls.

[Paws]

Thanks maksi & artk2002 for the explanation.

[Sharnita]

I find the tone of a lot of these bullying. Kind of "you want us all to die of cancer if you don't copy and paste".

I also think some of these are lame - who doesn't hate cancer?

[diesel_darlin]

I find the tone of a lot of these bullying. Kind of "you want us all to die of cancer if you don't copy and paste".

I also think some of these are lame - who doesn't hate cancer?

Exactly. Just like the ones that say "I know no one will follow directions but I want 20 people to say hi to me".

[zyrs]

The only one of these I liked was one about being eaten by dragons

[Luci]

Anecdotal post. I don't bother with those posts either, even the ones about loving you granddaughters. However a 14 year old young man who was very, very close to his grandfather did not take the diagnosis and prognosis (terminal) for his grandfather's cancer well and happened to get the "I hate cancer" repost and posted it himself. I think it was a little cathartic for him. I think I even liked it. By the way, the GF is cancer free.

That's the only time I saw any good in the post.