I have had a twitter account for about 4 or 5 years now. I was there before it was cool, long before the great Stephen Fry, and that’s something I brag about often. I’m sure everyone has heard of the power of twitter, with such stories as the plane crash on the Hudson River, and the Chilean Miners Rescue both of which were covered on twitter in real time and breaking news stories.
This week I have been a part of two very different news stories. Both stories serve as reminders of how good people can be. There are far more good people in the world than there are bad ones. The media seem to have forgotten that there are news stories they can cover about the goodness of people and that all news media doesn’t have to be about doom and gloom. Why are there never headline news stories about good things? Every breaking news story, every headline news, or even the lead story on the evening news are never about something good. When was the last time you heard about some person or people who did something amazing? If it’s covered at all it’s shoved away on some back page or so far down on the list of stories covered by TV news shows, you never manage to see it. That is unless a celebrity is involved.
This week two stories have dominated my twitter stream. Firstly a round of re-tweets about Alice Pyne, a 15 year old girl with terminal cancer who had started a blog and had written a ‘Bucket’ list (A bucket list is all the things you’d like to do before you ‘kick the bucket’). Thanks to the power of Twitter and other such social media sites, she’s now hot news and it sounds like most of her ‘Bucket List’ will actually come true. Such is the power of Twitter, social media in general and of the Internet as a whole.
Also this week came the sad news of poor Spike who was shot with a crossbow (warning picture of Spike with arrow is in the story).
A Twitter friend posted a like to the story, after I read the story, the two of us started talking about how awful it was and how we like to give back to the cruel person (people) just what they’d given out. Another friend then joined the conversation to agree with both of us. As the conversation continued I said that we should send Spike a get well package.
So we rolled with that, we have all bought treats and toys to pass on to Spike and his owner who we have never met. Next Friday we are meeting up to hand over our get well gifts to be passed on to Spike.
While shopping for Spikes get well gifts from me I stopped to talk to a lady in the cat food section, we started talking about Spike, I told her what the three of us were doing and to my amazement she grabbed a bag of treats off the shelf handed it to me and then handed me the money for the treats. I was shocked! I was more shocked when the cashier commented on all the cat stuff, I again told her what it was all for, she then let me know that she would be taking 50p off the total of the bill!
It’s weeks like this that I’m reminded how amazing and caring people can be. The kindness of strangers is an amazing and powerful thing.
Aww bless that’s so fab! A neighbour was talking about this poor cat yesterday – saying it was the second one injured by nasty humans recently. I find it hard to believe that humans can do that to animals, until I remember that humans are also capable of killing each other for little more than a bag of crisps.
I know it’s so sad isn’t it?
Two great stories and very good writing.
Thanks