Sensibilities

Whatever you do, there’s always someone who’s gonna be pissed.

Offensive much?

I saw a meme early at the start of the pandemic that I found mildly amusing. It was this particular one:

“Your grandparents were called to war. You’re being asked to sit on the couch. You can do this!” Meme from this Facebook page.

This meme has many variations. The first one I saw was uploaded by a prominent car journalist on his Facebook page. I got a chuckle out of that and didn’t think any more of it, until I had to Google the said journalist to check if he’d make a good resource person for a story I was working on. That’s when I found out that his posting of that meme stirred a bit of a hornet’s nest. A few of the reactions he got:

“So many people are suffering, and you make a joke about this? Not everyone can afford to Netflix and chill.”

“This isn’t the first time he posted something tone-deaf.”

(It became so bad he had to offer some sort of explanation for posting what he posted.)

Okay. Three things:

1. It may not feel like it, but staying at home when you’re hale and hearty and full of energy is an act of selflessness. Studies show that the young — especially the very young — carry what kills the old. Staying at home is you saying you care enough for others to not want to spread the virus further.

2. It can be argued that we’re also fighting an invisible war of sorts: it’s the war for our mental health. It doesn’t harm with muskets and bullets; its toll is more insidious.

3. Finally, the guy’s a car journalist, por fa. For the record, those who can afford cars in the Philippines belong to either the middle or upper classes. His audience are precisely those who can afford to Netflix and chill. He was talking to them.

If you don’t like what you read, you can always opt out.

The more voices surface online, the more I realize how a single message can elicit so many different reactions.

Scoring meals

Here’s another example of how people have different sensibilities. Back in 2018, Mastercard came up with a brand purpose campaign in collaboration with the World Food Programme. The company promised to donate 10,000 meals to starving children for every goal scored by Messi or Neymar Jr. in that year’s Fifa World Cup.

Image from The Drum.

Sweet? I thought so too. But then a cursory online search would lead you to a slew of reactions to the campaign, a lot of which were not positive. The main criticism went along the lines of,

“Why not just donate the meals anyway?”

Mastercard backtracked and said it would donate meals regardless.

See what I mean?

My main takeaways from these — and from all the other situations I’ve seen before and since — are: You can’t please everyone. You shouldn’t aim to.

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