Posting good deeds bring out inner cynic

THERE was a post doing the rounds where someone had made a cake for an elderly neighbour’s birthday. Lots of people were moved by the boundless goodness of the cake-maker but I felt like Captain Cynical, because all I could think about was the motivation, not for the cake-giving, but for the filming. This was filmed from cake mix prep to handover and to Captain Cynical, it smelt contrived, virtue signalling, click baity.

Sometimes it is about camaraderie, people posting pictures of their joining in with thanking frontline workers, for instance, is a spirit-oftogetherness kind of thing. Also lots of people do lots of nice things for no fanfare, sometimes good deeds are publicised by the people who witness them instead of those who do them. My issue is with the self-posting of acts of kindness. It’s weirder than filming yourself holding a door open or filling out a direct debit form for Trocaire.

I asked my cynicism meter/social media adviser, The Girlchild, to weigh in. She said that filming yourself doing anything is par for the course for plenty of people, I post therefore I am. She added that going TikTok viral is important because it can be lucrative but she agrees that constructing a good deed with that aim in mind, whilst evidently preferable to going viral for kicking a dog or something, is a bit cynical.

Then after a pause she wondered if maybe we could get my parents to get misty-eyed when we hand over the battered Lidl bag of groceries.

She said we could caption it, “These elderly people were starving in their cocoon, so we brought them food.” We’ll cut them in on the profit.