I'm NOT Invisible

There’s a video circulating on social media, or rather videos as I understand there are several of this genre floating around, that show a family playing a prank on a young girl, maybe 8-9 years of age. In it they – abracadabra - make her “invisible” - and then the entire family acts as if she’s not there. The problem that I have with this particular clip that I saw is that the girl gets in distress within 30 seconds of the start of the joke, and her family keeps us the pretense for 5 + minutes. By the end, I AM in distress and she was frantic. This is supposed to be funny. It’s not. Cruelty never is. I love joking and having fun myself. However, filming other people when the sole purpose is to get them upset & scared turns my stomach. American’s Funniest Home Videos has made a living for years by having folks poking fun at themselves or others. Yet even the pranks there have a limit. They don’t leave the “victims” frantically claiming to be seen. I firmly believe we have enough problems staying visible to the people that matter, we sure don’t need any extra trauma about it, however vicariously induced. Laughing at someone else’s obvious, real, pain hurts. It hurts them & us. In a world that skews toward the negative, it’s imperative that we find more positive ways to entertain. We need to hear the “aw shucks” stories, the sweet homecoming videos, the Paul Harvey’s of today or even the old re-runs of Carol Burnett. We as a culture need to make visible the good, because there are too many lies out there claiming that we are invisible. Here’s to being seen!