The recent earthquake started a new wave of the popular Facebook trend of sending plenty of likes, kindhearted posts, and even money to Tulsa. The earthquake, which could even be felt in Nebraska, caused many concerned grandparents, second-cousins, and even total strangers who don’t know anyone in the Tulsa area to send their loving support for the victims they were sure existed.
“Well I just feel terrible about the earthquake,” said Sally Smith, a Facebook user who used an hour of her time to post meaningful support to her wall. “It’s just terrible when this happens, but I did what I always do, send lots of support their way by flooding everyone’s wall with posts about it and making them feel bad if they don’t repost every last thing.”
Sally then called her good friend Helen White. Helen had been making these posts since last Saturday, about five minutes after the earthquake finished. “Well, I have a brother in the area and after the earthquake people started calling me asking if he was okay,” Helen said, “and knowing natural disasters I figured everything was definitely not okay.” She showed us her first post, which announced that she had set up a fund to help victims. The fund had reached over a thousand dollars.
“With these things you can never start sending support too early,” she explained. “I had to get it out there so people knew, often the news takes hours to report and by then who knows what could happen?”
The wave of supportive posts lead a large group to start sending relief money to Tulsa. Local groups were confused, but let the money keep coming. “We don’t know why they think anyone got hurt,” a local volunteer named Ted said, “But hey, free money.”
Sally Smith started a page dedicated to selling shirts and buttons saying that people supported Tulsa during this time of crisis. “It’s good to do our job and let other people know so they can be guilted into helping,” she said. Sally’s daughter was nearby, and once her mother went to another room said, “She does this with everything bad. If there’s a cause she’ll be talking about it all week until it’s fixed. Or, y’know at least everyone forgets about it.”
