Local man Josef Niebieski was capering across the internet when he found a truly heartwarming image in his news feed. It read:
This little boy sacrificed his own life to save others….. he knew he was going too die from brain cancer so he agreed to donate his heart and kidney , this shows the true Humanity of children what a hard decision, he is with God now. 1 like and Share = love!
Niebieski was touched by such a poignant story and felt an immediate urge to show his support. But something was holding him back. After hovering his cursor above the Like button for a few seconds, he broke down. “I just can’t, no. It’s a sad story, but I can’t go around associating with people who don’t understand punctuation. This isn’t me.”
Niebieski’s reaction to this post was long, volatile, and confusing. “One thing’s for sure. Whoever made this post was trying to get an emotional reaction, and it’s very much fucking working. At first, I felt empathy… what a sweet kid. Then I was a little dismayed by how the poor presentation really cheapened the tone. And now, I’m fucking livid. It gets worse the longer you look at it. Most 2nd-graders can pull off a comma without a space before it. Forget the space, there’s not even supposed to be a comma there in the first place! Jesus Christ, proofreading a sentence takes ten seconds. Whoever posted this is emotionally blackmailing me into promoting the butchering of the English language. It’s sick.”
At the next stage of trauma, Niebieski became reflective. “How can a story be so beautiful on the inside but so viscerally hideous on the outside? Do I just suck it up and like it? Does Facebook know when you scroll past this stuff without reacting? Am I a monster?”
Finally, it occurred to Niebieski that this short paragraph was possibly the saddest thing he’d ever read in his life. “It combines all the most wretched experiences of humanity: cancer, giving your life for a greater cause, grieving parents, run-on sentences, and ellipses with five dots. I truly cannot imagine anything more heart-wrenching.”
By William Boffa