I've realised that the last few chapters of this book have been quite down in the dumps. So to add a little something uplifting, here is what I feel is one of the most positive things to come out of this lockdown situation. Where complete strangers on the internet (well on Twitter in this case) all came together and started a hashtag that soon took off and lead to happy moments rather than sad ones. This event is truly the kindness of people and one that I'll remember for a long time.565Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡuYt0dFEpNU
Many of my mutual friends started to post their Amazon wishlists to their Twitter profiles. Some of them had birthdays during the lockdown, others were key workers and wanted to surprise other key workers. One person that I followed simply said she wanted to surprise others at random and didn't want any gifts to her in return. It was a really lovely idea. However, there was a backlash. One book reviewer I know quite well and follow on social media is also a key worker for the NHS. She was the loudest critic of the idea, saying the mass orders could put workers in the warehouse and delivery drivers at more harm than good. I could see her point of view. However, the replies she got either agreed solidly with her or called her out for being a negative person at a time of sorrow.
I had multiple wishlists online and all of them except one was for physical items. Well... all the physical items were books. I could see both sides of the argument. Yet a plan hatched in my head. If I made the only wishlist I had which contained all e-books public, get some sort of order in and then shared it about, would that truly be a dangerous thing to do?
I spent several hours trying to get this wishlist in order and then with bated breath, tweeted it online and waited. Nothing really happened apart from a few retweets. Another plan came to mind. The following day, I re-worded my tweet asking others to spread some kindness about and then drop links to their wishlists BUT still in the same tweet, dropped my link. Soon, lots of people came by and boosted not just my wishlist but their ones too. It got my phone pinging continuously with notifications. So much so that I actually had to turn it to silent since every time I was trying to do something important, it dinged which caught me off guard.
I was gifted kindly a few e-books off my list, which was generally lovely and made me smile for the first time in weeks. Yet there was a slightly negative twist to the story. There was one e-book that someone on Twitter had gifted to me, yet I never got the email link to claim the book. Maybe Amazon had been glitching about and simply failed to send it right? Nope. The truth was much worse than that. It turned out the person had then gone and un-gifted it to me for no reason. An e-book that I was truly looking forward to reading suddenly gone without a trace. I was actually rather upset.
I tried to remember all those users who were the nice ones. Yet my autistic brain as you know by now readers doesn't want to think of the good things. Only the sad and the bad things. It would have been nice to hear from the user their reason why they suddenly decided not to gift me the e-book in question. Had they clicked the wrong one by accident? Were they suddenly hit with a money situation and now couldn't afford the e-book gift? The e-book was only £1.49 yet I started to get serious doubts about the whole hashtag movement.
When others started to reveal it was happening to them, I realised something. If it wasn't just me being affected, could it be a single person targeting all of us? That's not really spreading kindness about right? So I had two options. I could either stay quiet about it or speak up and try to work out who the culprit was. I spoke up.
Across twelve or so hours, over fifty people tweeted me. Some saying it happened to them, others saying that not hearing any reason why was shocking. Then the gifts arrived in my inbox. A group of strangers came together and made my day a lot brighter. There were lots of emails redeem messages in my inbox as book after book suddenly came my way. I was in disbelief. To go from one incident of a suspicious troll to suddenly end up with a ton of gifts and supportive messages. I was truly floored by the replies. When I thanked them all and then said I was struggling with ill health (not COVID related, Mother Nature) the surprises kept coming. Book lovers, bloggers, even teens all of a sudden were messaging me and new friendships were born.
The last couple of days have made me smile, gasp and want to thank and spread some joy around. I've boosted everyone's lists for those who have sent me lovely messages. I've gifted a few in return with e-books (since I didn't feel comfortable gifting physical items about) and also, it's made me very excited for some new books to read within the next decade and century. My kindle is now fit to burst and I'm honestly so grateful that strangers took time out of their day to surprise me with love.
The user in question hasn't been identified, however, a few of us have some suspicions over who it may have been. A few mysterious users have deactivated their Twitters and they were involved in the wishlist hashtags as well, so some humans I've learnt will still be rotten apples after everything happening. Do something good for someone else however little it is. It is good for the soul and the heart I've learnt.
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