In the last couple of weeks, I have been notified on Facebook by friends about: - An abduction that involved the dad taking the kids against the mother's will

In the last couple of weeks, I have been notified on Facebook by friends about: - An abduction that involved the dad taking the kids against the mother's will for a few days -- three states away - A triple murder-suicide -- 300 miles away - A woman arrested for being cruel to her animals, complete with pictures -- in a city 150 miles away And this is with my blocks as high as I can make them. I am constantly being bombarded by news that affects a very small segment of the population in communities far distant from the one I live in. This does not provide any sort of public service to me. Emotional-laden content such as this and the "I'm safe" buttons exist for Facebook's purposes far, far more than they do for the user's purposes. This is the way of the new PC crowd: do something that benefits you but can be spun as a kindness to the community. Then shout down anybody who points out that you're only acting in your self interest. I do not doubt that this has a benefit for that small number of people actually trapped in a large-scale natural disaster (Although I would wonder what, exactly, in a world of billions of people constitutes "large scale"?) But if you waste five minutes of ten million people's lives with a notification like this? That's 5 minutes X 10 million = more than 2,200 man-years. It's the equivalent of 30 people's lives simply to make a few people feel better. In addition, because of the numbers involved, overall it actually creates much more stress than it reduces. There is a not-insignificant healthcare cost associated with things like this. The old-time capitalist pigs were easy to understand: they made stuff in order to make money. The new guys on the block are full of a lot more bullshit than the older guys -- and people who aren't paying attention are easily suckered into the schpiel and the concomitant pathos.