The wholesome social media trend turned south.
In mid to late September, a video on social media went viral.
It showed a beautiful silver purse tucked away between baby powder, baby Tylenol, and baby shampoo in the middle of the baby aisle at a store.
This video sparked the saying, “She deserved the purse,” — the assumption being that the purse was left by a mother who chose to buy something for her baby instead of buying the purse for herself. The anonymous mother, as mothers so often do, seems to have put her baby first, sacrificing one small materialistic item that would make her happy for the benefit of her child.
The video drew the attention of many social media influencers and consumers, and a new trend was born. People started going to stores such as Walmart and Target, bringing folded bills with them, which they discreetly placed under the lids of formula canisters, poked through the handles of Pampers boxes, or through the top of boxes of baby wipes.
The goal? To give parents, particularly mothers, buying the product a little bit of money to buy something for themselves, whether a coffee and a sweet treat or a pretty new purse.
The entire purpose of this trend was to give back to the community and mothers in general. This was an amazing message to pass along, and so many people began to participate in this innovative trend.
As the prices of, well, everything have gone up significantly recently, it’s understandable that a canister of baby formula would trump a new purse. But mothers also deserve fun, materialistic items that make them feel good. I can’t speak from personal experience, but so much hard work goes into being a mother — a lot gets sacrificed.
So, this trend was a happy reminder that mothers deserve to treat themselves as well as their children until a couple of weeks ago when the wrong people got wind of these acts of kindness.
In less than a week, videos started emerging of people running around baby aisles and ransacking the products that would “typically” have money hidden in them to find the money for themselves — many of them men or others who the trend was obviously not targeting, mocking the trend by including the caption “I deserve the purse too!”
The worst part was that they seemed to take pride in doing this.
In response, people immediately began to refrain from leaving money in baby products, and stores even had to put locks or nets on baby products. The fact that necessities for babies had to be secured says a lot about how greedy people can be.
It is truly disgusting how society can take a good thing and ruin it, but we also need to keep in mind that not every good deed needs to be recorded and posted online. If it was necessary to record it, was it genuinely coming from the heart, or was it just for views and social media engagement?
Society should sometimes leave well enough alone.