"Re-Post this Status": A Rant

I have seen a lot of this recently, and although almost all of the statuses (stati? *sigh* grammar) support good causes, I still find them incredibly annoying. These statuses try and guilt you into re-posting the status. They say things such as "if you are not afraid to show your faith" or "if you support our troops" then you should re-post this. Implying, that if you don't re-post it you are a horrible Christian and/or are a horrible person.

I don't think that it is right to guilt a person into showing support for a position. Just because you don't post a certain combination of words doesn't mean that you are afraid to stand up for your faith. Just because you refuse to be copy everyone else does not mean that you don't truly support our troops. Just because you refuse to spread a cliche phrase does not mean that you aren't a true Christian.

And because they chose to use status that tries to guilt me into re-posting it, I don't feel like doing it. I don't respond positively to negative pressure to do something, and when someones status pulls a guilt trip, my reaction is to ignore it.

Well, that was fun, but I should probably stop ranting now and bring this post to an actually beneficial conclusion. There are many people who respond negatively to the coercive language that the re-posted statuses used, but if a person where to phrase it more like "Please show your support and post"  instead of "this if you truly support this then you should re-post this," it would be more persuasive and a person would be more likely to do it.

So the conclusion is: our words have a powerful affect on people and if we want to be able to persuade a person to do something, we need to be careful how we phrase our wording.

Thank you.

The End

~Nat