People aren't interested in facts or intelligent discussion on facebook. All they want is to see those likes at the bottom of their post, so they can get that hit of dopamine and feel good about themselves. "This place is for smiles." is very appropriate. You're interfering with their ability to get their socially approved fix. The content of the picture/post is irrelevant and doesn't matter. I'd be very surprised if you weren't removed from the group for daring to attempt to bring her back down to reality. This situation speaks to our online culture as a whole. No one pays attention to content. A Columbia study found that 59% of links shared on social media have never been clicked. That means the person sharing it didn't even make an attempt at reading the article. They just spread information that makes them feel good.

The kid didn't consent to being born. He isn't his mom's property. Her parenting is obviously bad. He's going to suffer. Oh, but I'm the bad guy for speaking up. No, you can't do that. Just let people breed like rabbits and hurt their kids as long as it's a common method and lots of people are doing it, because you know, the bandwagon effect.

This is the problem, unfortunately. According to the law, he essentially is his mom's property. Unless someone can prove that there's violence in the home, children have very few protections from their maladjusted and mentally ill parents. And if they CAN prove violence, the system only throws the child into foster care where they will likely encounter other abusers. Not saying this kid deserves to get taken away from his mom because she's feeding him junk food, just speaking generally. But her reaction tells me she's suffering from denial that's likely a symptom of other serious problems. There is little to no protection from parents mentally and emotionally abusing their kids, or simply just being neglectful and stupid. The general attitude from most outsiders is "he's not my kid." So children are left to grow up around this sick behavior, and we expect them to magically turn into healthy and normally functioning adults. I can guarantee this kid will have issues with food and his weight his entire life. My boyfriend actually has severe IBS because of the abundance of cheap processed food his mom fed him as a child, and still struggles with his weight. I have severe trust issues because my mom didn't think about who she was leaving her child with when she went to work while I was young. By society's standards, both of our parents were wonderful and caring and did a good job.

Can we all at least acknowledge that we have a problem? This is an epidemic of shit parenting. Standards for moral and ethical behavior are all but gone. I don't think anyone here would argue that our society is sick. The solution lies at the source.