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Avondhu reporter Ellen Lynch this week explores her well developed sense of guilt.

I possess an extremely well developed sense of guilt. The kind only those raised by conservative parents in '60s Ireland and educated by even stricter Catholic nuns will identify with. I've tried various things over the years to get it to relinquish its tight grip on me but to no great effect. I'm besieged by it.

I feel guilty over many different things. Not keeping in touch with family and friends as much as I think I should. Finishing a whole bar of chocolate when I only meant to have two squares. Leaving for work without putting out the washing when it looks like it's going to be a nice day. Watching television when I should be doing housework. Not exercising enough. You name it, I can summon guilty feelings at will.

It's for that very reason that I dislike it intensely when other people try to make me feel guilty. I've plenty to be going on with, thanks very much. No outside help is required!

Facebook is one of the easiest ways for me to assuage my guilt about keeping in touch with family and friends. A quick 'PM' (that's private message to the uninitiated) asking how they are, telling them a little of what I've been up to and Bob's Your Uncle. I'm good for another few days. And I didn't have to listen to any of them drone on at the other end of the phone. (I feel guilty now for having written that!)

You will understand then why I hate it when people see fit to post messages on Facebook that go out of their way to make me feel guilty. Regular Facebookers will know the ones I mean. Someone posts a picture of a sick or disabled child and invites me to 'like' to show I care, implying that, if I don't press then I don't care. Some even say as much. Sometimes it's poor, suffering animals that are shown as I am entreated to 'like' if I want to stop such cruelty. Running the risk of being considered a heartless bitch, I rail against such efforts to manipulate me. I am steadfast in my refusal to be drawn in. I have every sympathy for the baby/elderly person/dog/cat, but someone getting me to press 'like' isn't going to help them. I've been tempted, once or twice, to respond in a really perverse way by saying: "Why, yes, thank you, I like very much the image of the suffering baby/dog or whatever. Thank you so much for sharing it with me."

Then there's the ones that invite me to press 'like' if I have a great father/mother/son/daughter/grandchild and if I love them. If Facebook was to be believed, I have scant regard for the lot of 'em.

Modern technology has brought another irritation, a new take on the old chain-mail letters that used to do the rounds. The old letters would urge us to pass them on to a dozen or so friends to ensure something good happened to us or risk having something bad come our way if we didn't. The new ones work on the same guilt-inducing premise. They can be circulated far faster and to a far bigger audience by e-mail and text message. It also of course makes it so much easier to pass them on to the requisite numbers if the recipient is so inclined, as there isn't much effort required. Or is too afraid to risk the dire consequences not to.

Some of the ones I received in recent times had an added personal provocation to pass them on, ramping up the pressure. Like the one I received via text recently from, would you believe, a family member. At the end of the message I was instructed to send it on to ten friends including the sender. "If I don't get it back I get the hint," it said. Eh? I was so incensed at the blatant emotional blackmail that I haven't rung her since. And I'm not even feeling all that guilty about it!

Another one I got again this week, by both text and e-mail, promised me a windfall if I passed it on. Not to do so was to risk being rendered penniless, was the dire warning. I'm resigned to awaiting my fate as a pauper. Actually that's not so. I'm not too worried because I've never, ever sent on any such messages. And, to date, while I can't say I'm living in untrammeled bliss exactly, neither have I had the kind of tragedy, upset or other awful consequences visited upon me that I've been warned of as a result of ignoring such missives.

I'm surprised by the people who've sent such stuff on to me, male and female. People I'd have otherwise thought sane and rational individuals. Leaving aside the unbearably mawkish and sentimental tone of such messages, it's the threat of bad things to come if I don't comply that is unpleasant. Isn't it time to break the chain?

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