Children For Sale

Everyone seems to be using instagram these days, and everyone is just snapping those pictures left right and center. Pictures of food, jokes, nice scenery, or just selfies, its all out there for your followers to check out. But as usual, we Arabs need to find a silly way to ruin everything, and I was shocked and bemused when I saw one of my friends posting a picture of his little boy and asking us to "like" it so that his son might win something or another. It drew me to that other page where I saw hundreds of pictures of little children being touted as trophies to "like". Now don't get me wrong but to me seems like an advertisement for lost children or worse an ad for children to be adopted.

Now apparently the child with the most votes will win a prize of some sort. But no matter the prize it still feels wrong to see that. On more thing is that they even add "say mashalla" to each picture as if this just made it safe and okay. That's exactly what I mean when we Arabs keep finding silly functions for amazing technology, and for sure it won't be the last time. Does anyone else feel the same way I do? Or is it just oversensitivity from my side? Well what matters is that worse things could evolve from this practice if it goes on unchecked. It could be abused by a pedophile or some sick minded person.

Now you do understand that the sites sting this kind of pageant is the real winners out of this scheme. They just attract thousands of followers to use as advertisement material for their pages. Oh and just to keep things all good and dandy they would post some religious pictures in the middle to fool people. Speaking of which, I used to follow a person on instagram that posted some nice furniture but the annoying thing was that each night he or she would post a chapter from the Qur'an so small that you can't really read, you can go ahead and guess as to how long it took me to unfollow that page. However you want to paint it, religious piety won't be achieved by posting pictures, it comes from your own actions towards your fellow man. That person did not believe in that obviously.

Don't you just hate it when people use religion to get popularity?! Especially when they know very little about their religion. At least look it up on Google or something. But that subject is for another day. What I do understand is the way people need to be popular, but it's the way you seek it that makes the difference. And the call for attention is one of the most basic instincts in today's human behavior. And let me be honest with you, it just annoys the hell out of me for some reason.

Well, finally I would like to add that being out of the writing scene did harm what little talent I had, so I do apologize for throwing this piece at you and I do love it that you guys are so supportive, so thank you so much for that.