I don't do FB and know very little about how it works. However my employers use it and the manager's wife and mother who have never set foot in the place, know zero about the business, "like" every dam post on it. This told me everything I ever needed to know, it is all faux happy clappy love in.
FB is whatever you want it to be. Some pages may be "faux happy clappy love in", but not the ones I'm involved with. The groups I belong to are active across the world in animal rescue. In one group alone this year we've rehomed over 200 street dogs around the world - dogs that had been brutalised in ways I couldn't detail here because people would complain, dogs that were literally living skeletons on the brink of death from starvation when we found them, and many dogs that were rescued from trucks taking them to slaughterhouses in China and Vietnam where they would have been tortured to death because the people believe the meat tastes better if the animal suffers while it dies. These 200 dogs had endured unspeakable cruelty in various forms, and every one of them is now in a loving home, and it's not an exaggeration to say it's largely due to us being able to communicate via FB.
A message is received by someone that a dog has been run over in, say, Bangkok. This dog will be left lying in the street and people will just walk by if we don't help it. A post is put on the FB group asking someone close by to find the dog. The dog is found and a vet wants $1000 to operate and treat. An appeal goes out on the FB group and within a couple of hours members all over the world have sent $10 or $20 and the $1000 is raised. The dog receives treatment and someone in Bangkok offers to foster it during its recovery. When the dog is ready its details are posted on FB and someone will offer to adopt it. The dog is then transported to its new home, very often the first home it's ever had. All the costs are paid by the thousands of people around the world who support the group. We pay vet bills, relocation costs, sterilisation programme costs, dog and cat food bills at private shelters around the world run by people trying to make a difference in countries where dogs and cats are considered to be vermin, and many other projects. And it's all achieved by us talking to each other every day on FB. The groups I belong to are helping dogs and cats in Thailand, Romania (a member country of the EU whose government perpetrates horrendous cruelty on dogs and cats), Greece, China, India, Vietnam and Bulgaria. There's a wonderful group of young people in India called Guardians of the Voiceless, who are trying to change the way animals are viewed and treated in India, who literally couldn't function without the help they receive via FB.
Cuddled up next to me as I type this is a little dog who a year ago was starving to death on the streets of Thailand. She was found as skin and bone, scraping roadkill off the road and trying to eat it. She was pregnant, had tapeworm, was covered in fleas and over 100 ticks, was severely anaemic and had blood parasites which would have killed her if she hadn't starved to death first. She was rescued by a wonderful woman who just couldn't drive by like everyone else, and who knew someone who rescues street dogs locally. This little dog then suffered kidney failure when she had her pups because they took everything she had and her little body couldn't cope. She spent three weeks at the vet, and it was touch and go. Thankfully she recovered, although she will have chronic kidney disease for life. And now this sweet-natured, dear little girl lives here with me, my other two dogs and my four cats. She's a happy, bouncing, fun-loving little dog who must have been so frightened on her own on Thailand's cruel streets, and I thank god for FB enabling her to have the life she deserves.
FB is what you make it, but it should never be dismissed as just a mutual admiration social site. There are millions of people around the world using FB to make the world a better place. They're raising funds for thousands of good causes, giving moral and emotional support to people with terminal and chronic illnesses, educating people in new languages, exchanging experience of almost every conceivable situation, and there are millions of pages and groups forming what is a thriving animal welfare community, helping those that can't help themselves. Whatever you care about you will find like-minded people on FB and, believe me, if you saw the posts and photos I see every day about the street dogs and cats around the world you wouldn't "like" any of them, many of them would break your heart. FB most certainly isn't "all faux happy clappy love in".
