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Online Positivity

The internet has become a dark place. Full of bullies and the infamous trolls, it often leads to people shying away from putting themselves out there in fear of being shot down. Something about the anonymity of being behind a screen seems to hand people a false sense of power, able to disregard the consequences of their actions.
Why is it so easy for people to spew such nasty words? It's so difficult to conform to this army of negativity. For example, if you never post a selfie, you're weird, but post one too many, you're conceited.
Though, through her online influence, one YouTuber and Twitch streamer is trying to change this pattern of bullying. Mary Tomson, aka SuperMaryFace, has started a hashtag with her fans known as spiders on Twitter, #spiderselfiesunday.
As the name suggests, her spiders post a selfie on a Sunday. As an avid follower of Mary, I'd seen this hashtag before, but had not participated until last week.

And I'm so glad I did.

Scrolling through the hashtag, I didn't see any nasty comments whatsoever, a rare occurrence on the internet. Instead, I saw a lot of people who would usually hide themselves from the internet posting photos of themselves. And none of them had to be perfect instagram models to get compliments.

The compliments that both I and others received were heart felt and genuine. None of us were typical beauties, per say (I do hate that term, but we weren't photo-shopped models trying to reach an impossible standard of perfection), but it was so easy to find beauty in everyone.
Kindness has always had a domino effect, and this hashtag benefits from it greatly. The pure joy you naturally feel from a genuine compliment (particularly when it points out a characteristic instead of a generic comment) makes you want to spread that feeling onto others. I must have spent almost an hour last Sunday looking through the spider selfies, complimenting people, and it was so rewarding.
I wish people would do this more. I think it's far more satisfying to bring people up rather than trying to drag them down.

Maybe some would argue that this is shallow and superficial. But why do we argue that finding beauty in someones appearance is bad? In celebrating peoples external beauty, we enhance and express the attractiveness on the inside, something that being a bully can never show,


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If you want to take part in #spiderselfiesunday, just post a hashtag and a selfie on twitter! Let me know your experiences of positivity online in the comments. All comments are welcome but asked to be kind and respectful.

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