Facebook was my gateway drug into the world of social
media. I remember the day I opened my account. It was November 16, 2011: I had
just gotten home from doing close to ten years in the Virginia Department of
Corrections. I was surrounded by family and friends who worked as Sherpas
guiding me through the nuisances of Facebook etiquette. 1) Don't post about politics.
2) Don't post about religion: unless you are posting about how awesome Jesus
is. 3) Don't post about racism. Basically, I was advised to avoid posting about
anything other than cats, babies, and food.
I was so eager to get reacquainted with some of my old
friends that I indiscriminately started sending and accepting friend requests.
Within a few days I had over 500 "friends". This was awesome. What I
didn't account for was how much some of us had changed over the years. After a
while it was obvious some of our lives were in completely different places.
This isn’t about being praise worthy or blame worthy. Life happened and we had
different priorities.
The overwhelming majority of my “friends”
wanted Facebook to be a place where they could escape from the day to day grind
of life. I didn’t know social media was supposed to be fun,
and when I found out I didn’t care. All of this was happening so fast.
I turned my Facebook into my public diary and started
journaling. It was cathartic. I wrote what I felt and didn’t care about the
consequences. There were days I felt incredibly blessed to be home and have a
second chance at life; on those days, I wrote about my feelings. There were
days when the world seemed like a flaming bag of crapsicles; on those days I
wrote. I didn’t shy away from controversial issues. I was indifferent to
the agreed upon rules that governed Facebook. This was seen, by some, as passive aggressive behavior. I lost a lot of those early "friends".
Our society conditions people to avoid “controversy”.
We are taught to ignore bigotry, hatred, and incivility. Too many people have bought into
the belief that society's ills can be fixed by ignoring them. There
are people who believe their right to bliss shouldn’t be impeded by the raw
nature of our world. They are wrong! They have every right to ingest or avoid any
information they choose, but they don’t have a right to another’s silence. I don’t
apologize for the (small) role I’ve played in ruining social media. I don’t
apologize for writing about race, religion, class, culture, or politics. I don't apologize for my truth being abrasive against the thin skin of those who choose to run from the world around them. Maybe, If we
hadn’t avoided talking about these issues for so long we might understand how they affect us?
