On Social Media

My troubles didn’t start until this year.  After being on Facebook for years and years with few problems, this year, suddenly, I’ve been thrown in Facebook jail three times.

The first time, I probably had it coming.  I called a guy a fuckhead.  Generally, I try not to do the whole name calling thing, but the MAGAts love to come to liberal sites like Mother Jones and do their troll act.  I got fed up with a relentless asshole.  I should have just reported him.  My bad.

The second time, I got thrown into jail for 7 days for posting an Associated Press news article about the New Zealand massacre.  I still don’t know how, exactly, that violated Facebook’s community standards.  It wasn’t as if I live streamed the horrendous act (that Facebook somehow allowed to happen) and it wasn’t that there was any video in the news story.  But I did my nine days in jail (Facebook doesn’t count weekends as days, so my 3 days was 5, my 7 days was 9 and my latest….well, we’ll see).

During the nine days in jail, I finally answered the siren call of Twitter.  And now I’m an addict.

Most of my time on social media is spent on politics, because politics is my abiding passion.  I follow all of my elected officials that have social media accounts, and comment on their posts.  I’ve “met” some of the absolutely worst people in the comments sections of politicians, the true believers who reject reality and think they “own the libs” with their misspelled and grammatically and factually incorrect comments. 

That’s how i wound up in jail again, this time for 30 days.  I violated Facebook’s community standards by replying to a MAGAt. 

“Sweetheart fool…the wall is *about* racism.  Immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than ‘Murikans do.  White men are shooting people all over the place.  You’re too stupid for me to bother with.  All you can come up with are Spanky’s talking points and all he does is lie.”

But liberals are the snowflakes. 

Facebook has banned me all three times on a Friday evening.  I guess the jailers don’t like working weekends. 

There are a couple of secret groups I’m in on Facebook and so I lurk those groups now.  Can’t post.  Can’t share.  I can and do grab articles and memes and share those on Twitter.  I haven’t totally figured Twitter out yet, but I don’t think they have secret groups.

Can’t use messenger, so even if people did notice that I’m not on Facebook, and reach out on messenger, I can’t respond, so I just deleted the app. 

So far, I like Twitter and it’s even better for political junkies like me because it’s so much faster and more up to date than Facebook.  I joined in February and am following 280 people and have 163 following me, though these numbers go up daily.    

It’s kind of like being at a really erudite cocktail party.  Everyone is saying pithy things, and I’m reading them and enjoying them, but I’m also intimidated as hell and kind of stay in my corner and hope no one expects me to be witty or pithy.

I’m following lawyers and writers.  Politicians and my three twits (Jason Smith, Roy Blunt and Josh Hawley).  I follow activists of as many stripes as I can find, and sit quietly, listening in and learning.  I follow journalists and artists.  I’m following most of the people running for President.

 Twitter has allowed me to hook up with a lot of people living in Missouri and we can mock the lying republicans and send them articles that disprove all their lies.  It’s fun.

I’ve toyed with just creating another Facebook account during this jail time.  Seems like a lot of work for not all that much pay off.  I’ve also thought about just getting off Facebook all together, but I’d miss a few people that I’ve grown to care about.

So, from my experience, it’s hilarious that conservatives whine about social media blocking them. Conservatives own Facebook.  Mark Zuckerberg is not exactly a liberal. 

Twitter can and does reflect the best and worst of human beings.  As you might expect.  So far, I’ve tried to avoid the worst and drink in the best.