21 Things You Should Shut the F**k Up About. About Which You Should Shut the F**k Up. Whatever.

This turned up on my Facebook feed tonight.

Follow this if you can:  This is a blog post written in response to a blog post about what people should do to be happy. The former blogger, who goes by DIY Couturier, was pissed that the latter blogger, who blogs under the name mindopenerz, had put together a list of things people can/should/do do to be happy.

A few examples from the original list:

• Appreciate life
• Choose friends wisely
• Be considerate

There's nothing wrong with this list. Except that the entries are grammatically inconsistent, which is one of my pettest of peeves. Other than that, however, this post is standard self-help happy-crappy that is mostly meaningless but harmless.

Derp along if you feel like that's what you want to do.

But DIY Couturier didn't see it that way. She took extreme exception to what she called "the Cult of Happy" implying that people with depression simply need to act in happier ways. Battling depression, she said, is "bad enough without people ramming Happy Tips at you through [F]acebook."

If you don't want to be exposed
to cute otters or advice, perhaps
the Internet is not the place for you.

And then she proceed to put together a list called "21 Tips to Keep Your Shit Together When You're Depressed." And it's an interesting if innocuous list, just as the original "how to be happy" list was. Neither one of them particularly bothers me or inspires me, you know? In fact, I think they have a lot more in common than either poster intended.

What do you call a bromance between two bloggers?
A blomance? Ew.

The thing is, I get where DIY Couturier is coming from. I know from depression. I know from relying on Prozac to keep your head above water. I know that Maslow's hierarchy of needs looks significantly different to someone whose brain chemistry isn't mixed quite right.

But I would respectfully suggest to DIY Couturier that her outrage is founded on a semantic error. Nowhere in the how-to-be-happy list does it ever state that the writer is giving advice to depressed people. I totally get that a lot of "normals" (aka people with chemically-balanced brains) will pass on a list like this to loved ones who suffer from chronic and/or cyclical depression because they fundamentally misunderstand what depression is. And that can be incredibly frustrating.

Why don't you just find a list of things millionaires do,
and let me know how that works out for you?

But I think getting pissed off at people who don't understand depression because they don't understand depression is not the way to go. And I especially think (again, with all due respect, as DIY Couturier seems to be a smart and insightful person) that compiling a list of specific life instructions may not be the optimal way to express dissatisfaction with someone else's list of specific life instructions.

And to expound on that, I've come up with my own list of 21 things you really shouldn't bitch about just because your fee-fees got hurt by what an anonymous stranger said on the Internet.

I know, it's starting to be like Listception.

Because anyone can write a list. And anyone can like it or dislike it. It's almost like freedom of speech or something.

So here goes.

21 Things You Should Shut the F**k Up About. 
About Which You Should Shut the F**k Up. 
Whatever.

1. Other people don't understand what you're going through.

2. Other people don't agree with your religious views.

3. The Internet is full of buffoons who can't spell.

4. The world isn't the way it used to be.

5. The world is too much the way it used to be.

6. No one understands your genius.

7. Some people don't share your views on guns.

8. Facebook wants to find ways to make money from a service it offers for free.

9. Nobody tolerates your intolerance of intolerance, which is intolerable.

10. Nobody understands that your opinions are worth more than other people's opinions, because your opinions are right.

11. You have history on your side, and history is never wrong.

12. Stupidity is a human right, so you can't be held accountable for yours.

13. Moral absolutes are a thing.

14. But only moral absolutes as defined by a belief system you agree with.

15. Christians/Jews/Muslims/feminists/liberals/conservatives/radicals/reactionaries/rich people/poor people/gays/straights shouldn't be able to dictate policy.

16. People are stupider than they used to be.

17. People are smarter than they used to be.

18. Disagreement is treason.

19. Men are superior to women.

20. Women should be able to upload their pussies to the Internet without being considered objects of sexual desire.

21. Everyone except you is a racist.

Being judgmental is fun. Try it. Wheee.