Hashtag Philanthropy

Anyone who spends time on social media will have encountered one of those posts in which the writer uses a life cycle event to expound on how wonderful his family and, by extension, he is. The occasion of a spouse’s birthday, or of the birth of a child, triggers an outpouring of sentimental and bathetic pap meant to demonstrate the depth of feeling, the trueness of heart, the purity of intention, the nobility of status possessed by the writer: My wife is the most beautiful and charitable and perfect creature ever to alight this earth, my husband not only runs marathons but kills and guts dinner for us every night, little Joey just matriculated at Brown after spending eight months kayaking Burmese refugees to village health clinics. Whatever the actual virtues of the relatives in question—and I am sure there are plenty—the purpose of these missives is to let the reader know just how good things are going for the author, and to make the reader question his own life choices. They are a means of social self-congratulation.

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