The Truth about Dare

I hate dares.  I seriously hate dares. And I won't do them. No one should. People who dare you to do things should be ignored.

It seems to kind of be this primal urge in us to give in to a dare. I know that being accecpted and belonging are pretty important on the Maslow chart, but this is one time when we should ignore what our minds may be telling us to do. No wait, not our minds. Accepting a dare is almost always an emotional response.

It kind of goes like this. Someone dares us and inside, we get this response: We have been challenged. If we do not accept and complete the challenge, we will look bad.

When we're kids, one of the more common dares we run into is the Dare from Bully. Bullies are like the ass hairs of existence. Like ass hair, I'm sure they serve some purpose, but I have no idea what it is and in the meantime, they are annoying, ugly, and are apt to cause irritation.

When a bully dares us to do something, our emotional response is usually "oh, the person who freaks me out just challenged me. If I do this thing they want and I'm successful, they'll respect me. If I'm not successful, they'll still be impressed with my bravery."

Um, no.

The bully isn't going to be impressed with anything. Do not let the afterschool specials and teen movies fool you into thinking otherwise. The bully is an ass hair who does not have your best interests in mind and wants you to do something that will cause you harm, humiliation, and/or get you into trouble.  You will never gain their respect by doing what they say.

Let me repeat that because it's a damned important thing to remember in life. You will not gain their respect by doing what they say.

What the bully is doing is testing to see how far he or she can go with you. They want to know how much you will grovel, how much control they really have. Nothing you do, so long as you are doing what they want, will ever make your life better around them.

So what do you do? It won't be easy and it may go against your instincts, it may even cost you in some cases, but what you do is say no. Or better, say, "Fuck you, ass hair, I'm not here to be your bitch."

You may get into trouble for that though. So find some other, more appropriate way to say it.

Then there are the people who dare you to do things that seem like they are in your best interests.  You know the types. The family members or "friends" or whatnot who DARE you to "lose ten pounds" or "run a marathon" or "find a better job."  Yes, all the professional or amateur motivational speakers out there who are just full of pep and challenge for others.

The people are more like the pimples of existence.  They seem harmless enough, though you do wish they would go away. They often come out of no where, can be embarrassing, and can have a devastating effect on your self-esteem and confidence.  We tend to believe they're around because of something we did wrong or that they're just part of life.  Sometimes, they leave scars.

These people act like they have your best interests in mind, but like the bullies, they really don't.  Even if what they dare you to do might benefit you in some ways, doing it will, in the long run, cause you harm. They will see it as you accepting their advice and guidance.  Once they think they have you hooked, there is no stopping them.

It seems so harmless at first. You get dared and you think, "Well, she/he is right. I would benefit from the thing they dared me to do. What's the harm?"

The harm comes from the control these people now presume to have. They view themselves as THE GREAT LIFE CHANGERS and will begin to pick at you and find fault after fault.  They will never be satisfied and no matter what you do, it will never be enough.

The truth is, you could make yourself perfect and they would still keep bitching. This isn't about you. This is about their need to view themselves as important because they're so good at helping others improve their lives.

So whenever someone challenges you to do something that seems to be a benefit to you, don't do it. You can either just ignore them or actually try and explain why they don't get to emotionally blackmail you.  Often that doesn't work though. They just can not fathom why their wonderful suggestions won't be followed. It has to be something wrong with you.

As annoying and potentially dangerous as these types of daring can be, they're not what inspired this post. No, that is the new type of social shaming dare that one finds almost daily on Facebook. Tell me if you've seen any of these.

People will talk about (useless trivial media thing), but they won't talk about Jesus.    Jesus said if you deny me to Facebook (or, you know, other people), then I will deny you to my father. Most won't repost this. I dare you to.

The news reports about (useless and ever changing trivial blahblah) but won't talk about the soldiers killed in (where ever they happen to be for whatever country you're from). Our soldiers die for us. We don't support our troops enough. Most won't have the courage to  post this. I challenge you to post this on your wall. 

I could go on. You've seen them. They always follow the same pattern.

People care about crap and not about The Very Important Thing.
We should feel guilty about not caring about The Very Important Thing.
Bible verses or other guilt mechanism.
Possible threats.
Emotional manipulation to make you sound so special for doing the dare.
The dare.

What this basically is though is a chain letter or some other bit of useless spam. People want to see their causes supported and they want to feel like they're the sparkly poo divatron for doing it.  At the same time, they want you to do it as well, so they know they're not alone.

Look, and I realize I could be wrong here, but I somehow doubt that when you die, Jesus is going to say, "Oh yeah. You accepted me as your savior and you prayed to me and we had this great relationship, but you didn't post that thing on Facebook so....nope."

I also think there are better ways to support the troops or firefighters or mothers or cancer or whatever else they want people to support. Do not fall for the dare.

The Facebook one is easy to handle. Ignore it. Do not repost.  If this person keeps spamming you with dares, block them. Just, whatever you do, don't give in. If you have given in before, don't give in again. The more we ignore them, the quicker they will go away.

Oh, and I realize I didn't have an insulting metaphor for the Facebook dare people. I'll try to come up with one later. You're welcome to suggest some as well.

I'm not going to dare you to do it though.