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Slapped by Facebook

John W. Pinkerton

oldjwpinkerton@gmail.com


I opened my Facebook account a few days ago, and I had a personal note from a Facebook Corporation fellow who apparently works out in California.  I was duely impressed: Facebook and California!


“Your comment goes against our Community Standards on violence and incitement.”


The fellow then added as though he were doing me a favor, “No one else can see your comment. We have these standards to prevent and disrupt offline harm.”


Well, I certainly would not want to cause “offline harm,” whatever that is.


I could hardly remember what my post was in response to.  I looked it up and I think this was the one:


Now, that's a pretty plain vanilla post---and pretty pointless.  I'm not sure how the Facebook representative would have thought would have been a more appropriate response.  It really didn't give me much to work with---just the names of serial killers and their signs.  Perhaps I should have responded, “Oh, I do hate these folks so much!” or  “I think I'll spend a day or two looking these folks up to learn more about them.”


Being that I'm an Aries and not represented on the Facebook list, I made the following response: “I'm an Aries. Damn, now I must kill two or more folks so the list will be more complete.”


Now I must admit that's sick humor…but it's humor---not incitement to violence…I'm pretty sure.


The California fellow went on to say that I had several options that I could employ to response to being slapped by this fellow, but common sense and a sense of humor prevented me from pursuing the matter any further.


In fact, I might send him flowers for providing a fine little topic for my essay writing.


By the way, a few days later, Facebook kicked me out of the Facebook family for using the phrase, “take them out back and shoot them.”  Well, shucks, I meant that in the nicest way.

enough