During a recent trip back to my Florida, I was talking to a guy I’m friendly with. To protect his anonymity, I’m not going to say his name, but to know he’s from Tampa is to know that’s not much of a clue at all. We were talking about comedy and he, in what he must’ve thought was a related topic, told me about his recent one-week sentence of suspension. From Facebook! ‘Cause he lives the Thug Life.
I see it every time I’m online, scrolling innocently through my feed: Some guy will be posting about how he was suspended from Facebook because of something he posted and now he’s acting like fucking Andy Dufresne, diving out of the sewage pipe.
I’m sure you all have Facebook friends like this. There are two sides to every instance of someone getting suspended over content, and the bad news is they’re both stupid. (There is no good news.)
First, let’s look at the people who are reporting this stuff in the first place. How big of a sanctimonious asshole do you have to be to voluntarily go to a FREE website and get offended at a meme (which is just words and a photo), and then snitch on whoever posted.
There’s just so much stupid to unpack here. Think of Facebook as the great outdoors. You are there and everyone else is there too. The last time I was in a public place and I heard something that offended me, you know what I did? Nothing. Because I don’t get offended. The scrotum-shaped ego required to say you were “personally attacked” by some guy saying a thing is ridiculous.
On the off chance that I am offended, I just… am… offended. Crazy, right?! Turns out being offended is not fatal and it has zero symptoms. Even if you do nothing and call nobody, you’ll manage to pull through. Just. Get. Over. It.
Then there are the Insta-martyrs who are dying on the hill of “The Right to Share Memes.” In the case of my friend (we’ll call him “Tunneled Out in Tampa”), he was suspended for five days because of a Notre Dame Cathedral meme. Something about child molestation – haw haw haw! Mind you, this was not a meme he made, nor was it a joke he wrote. The only constitutional right of his that was threatened, apparently, was his right to pass notes like a fucking seventh grader. You’re not Lenny Bruce and you’re not Bill Hicks.
You know who REALLY doesn’t like your posts after your triumphant return from Facebook Jail? People who have been to actual jail. Don’t be so embarrassing all the time, guys.
My proposed solution for all of you is to bond, compromise, and meet in the middle over the one bit of common ground you have: It’s FACEBOOK! You are treating it like your own personal safe space and it’s not. It’s a place to post pictures of your dessert, find out which Sex & The City character would lie on an anonymous quiz, and get catfished by porn stars. Stop making it more than it is!!
AlphaBitch OUT!
