Hands holding a Christmas presentPolka Dot Images
Christmas morning is certainly a time for sharing. Sweets are passed around for breakfast. Families reminisce and reflect on fond memories together. And of course, for most, there are presents.
But perhaps the sharing has gone too far.
"Quote unquote writer" Jon Hendren spent some time Christmas curating a list of the brattiest tweets out there.
Here's an abridged version:
"I didn't get an IPhone for Christmas time to roll up into a ball and die."
"I didn't ask for much because I don't really need anything.. All I want is a car for crying out loud!"
"and my mom went directly against me. she asked me if I wanted the black or white iPad. I said white, of course. tell me why mine is black..?"
"Got That 60" I Been Asking For, New PS3, & Like 4 Bills! No iPhone 5 Tho... -_-"
(Yes, these are real tweets.)
Mashable writer Stan Schroeder pointed out that many of the originators of the tweets were taken aback by the backlash they received after Hendren retweeted their special brand of holiday cheer to his 49,000-plus followers.
"Still, complaining about your Christmas gifts, no matter how small they are (and an iPhone, I'm sure most would agree, is quite an expensive gift) is bound to incite some negative feedback," wrote Schroeder.
That's not to say all Christmas-loot-related posts on social media are inherently awful. It's one thing to do a mildly irritating humble brag on Facebook by casually posting a photo of the new shiny thing you got for the holidays. (This, in fact, seems to be the new normal now.)
But it's a whole new level of insensitive when that big gift you're excited to share with the world is a gun. And there seemed to be a whole lot of gun-toting on Instagram this year, so much so The Verge did a round-up of them.
Rebecca Greenfield from The Atlantic noticed that a lot of these happy new gun owners were boasting the AR-15, "a popular rifle of choice these days both for consumers and murderers," and wondered: "Maybe all the talk about Bushmaster and guns inspired these Christmas gifts."
Certainly these people weren't purposely trying to rub salt in the open wound that is America's recent spat of terrible gun violence, but regardless, there is something unsettling about a face full of Christmas glee caused by a killing machine.
Madeleine White