Pointless Curses, Nonsense Verses

Thursday 23rd March

I am sitting on the bus, looking at my phone, minding my own business. There is a group of eleven year olds on the other side of the isle who are incredibly annoying but possible to ignore. And so I scroll, looking at nothing in particular.

That's when I get the notification 'iPhone would like to share a photo with you'. It's from one of the eleven year olds who had clearly sent the picture to all their friends but also to anyone else who happens to have their airdrop turned on.

I decline without looking at it. But then I get another and another. It seems that they are all sending each other jokes. I happen to look at one and recoil in horror.

It's a fucking holocaust joke.

'This one's my favourite' says a prepubescent boy as he sends a meme of hundreds of gassed Jews. I am furious. How could I not be when they are joking about something like this?

They all laugh like hysterical hyenas over a picture of dead people. People who were once living and breathing. The holocaust isn't a joke. It happened less than a hundred years ago, it's still present in the minds of many people. Hell, some people who experienced it are still alive.

I want to tell them that this is a reminder to everyone alive that this sort of monstrosity shouldn't happen again. If you can laugh over the deaths of all of those people then you are effectively saying that the whole thing was just something to joke about. If you cannot learn from this then you are going to make history repeat itself. And it will.

There are countless situations where humans have failed to learn from their predecessors mistakes and make the same ones. It took two wars for people to learn to be more lenient towards each other. Don't let there be another holocaust.

If you think it's a joke then you are acknowledging that you think it was okay that it ever happened in the first place. That's really fucked up.

I wanted to tell them this. I wanted to scream and yell just to make them see their ignorance. But there were nine of them and only one of me, and I've never been great with words, at least not in a verbal conversation.

So I sit and watch them get off the bus, still laughing, still grinning. I feel only disgust and contempt for myself. I should have said something. I shouldn't have just let it happen. Perhaps I am just as bad as them?