So, there's a subreddit out there known as the Herman Cain Awards. Basically, it's the Darwin awards, but for COVID denialists who kick the bucket due to their own ignorance. Named after Herman Cain, the republican ex politician who died from COVID after dying its effects.
Essentially, people who are COVID denialists and start posting anti vax stuff on their social media, who then contract COVID and die, have their posts screenshotted and posted on reddit for all to enjoy. It makes sense, and in my opinion it's kind of entertaining, but lately it's come under fire for a variety of reasons.
First of all, people start getting all uppity about "celebrating death". And how the people who post on there must be monsters to make fun of people who got the virus and died. To comment on this, uh, it's not really celebrating. It's more just looking at how stupid these people are, and how they died from their own stupidity. As the saying goes, play stupid games, win stupid prizes, and why shouldn't people grab the popcorn when these ignorant people who are holding society back do themselves in? Quite frankly, virtually no one who is posted on there isn't posted on there because they dug their own grave. And honestly, I don't think anyone literally celebrates them dying. It's more morbid gallows humor than anything. If anything, I just see it as a waste. 95% of these people would've lived statistically if they got the shot, but they didn't. The subreddit itself is very pro vaccine, and if anything, it's heartbreaking. In between people digging their own graves, there were also posts on there from front line medical workers going on about how crazy this crisis is. And it is. It's heartbreaking. Most of these deaths could have been avoided. And if anything I think most people hope they're a stern warning to others. And honestly, there have been posters on there who were anti vax and got their vaccine because of that subreddit. So it's not all bad, and the sub actually has a lot of positive purposes. Like, if anything, it's an important part of vaccine advocacy in my opinion. A sort of "scared straight" program for anti vaxxers. Will it reach everyone? no. But it does help more than it hurts.
Now, more recently the sub has come under fire for different reasons. Mostly due to the fact that the posts aren't censored when they're posted. Identifiable information is included, and this has led to doxxing and harassment incidents. This is wrong. I believe in a point and laugh nature of these subreddits. It's fine to look at stupid crap people said that later got them into hot water, it's another to harass the people involved. That said, I believe the reddit admins are taking proper and necessary action toward the sub on that front. Some have argued this undermines the legitimacy of the posts as people might think they're faked, but let's be honest, people have a right to privacy, and i can see the ethical issues with posting peoples' personal social media posts on reddit for all to see, for whatever reason. This applies to more political subs too. It's been a long standard policy with subs like crap(insert group)say and enough(insertgroup)spam that the identifiable information is stripped out of posts to stop harassment. That's fair, and I can see how that goes against the policy of reddit. However, I still believe the sub serves a valid purpose and should exist, and I personally think a lot of people need to chill.
We've lost nearly 700,000 people to this disease in the US as of me writing this, and past the first 400-500k, most of those deaths were arguably avoidable. And heck half of those first 400-500k were arguably avoidable too given Trump's mismanagement and downplaying of the virus. We live in a country where people don't socially distance, they don't wear masks, they don't take vaccines, and they act so high and mighty for it, claiming it's their freedom. And then they die, sometimes taking others with them as the process as, hello? This is a contagious disease and the vaccine isn't foolproof. It's almost like these people are naturally selecting themselves out of the gene pool by acting like this. And we're giving them a sort of "darwin award" for it. By the way, the darwin awards aren't new, why are the herman cain awards suddenly under fire when people have been watching people stupidly kill themselves for decades now?
I mean, generally speaking I see why reddit admins are forcing a rule change, but other than that, I don't see the controversy. We're not causing these peoples' deaths, if anything we've been trying to prevent them for the past two years and people just don't listen. We're genuinely frustrated by this. Why not have some gallows humor on the subject? People just get obnoxiously self righteous for no reason I think.
Honestly, I'm just gonna end this with how I end every article about COVID and vaccines. By telling you, SERIOUSLY, GET THE SHOT. I don't want you to be given a herman cain award here. Getting awarded for this is not a good thing. And dying of COVID, according to the nurses on that subreddit, is terrifying. Really, do yourself a favor. Get the shot. There's no tricks. I want you to live.
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