Social media becomes more problematic for me to use by the day. Liberals can say whatever the hell they want with absolutely no fear of censorship. Conservatives can’t tell the truth without Facebook or Twitter slapping some half-assed “fact checking” claim that is usually a pathetic joke of biased interpretation passed off as truth by a lazy press corps. Politics cannot be avoided, but only half the conversation is being allowed.
I’ve always used Facebook and liked the interface until I began to realize how intrusive their data mining has become. For example, somehow Mark Zuckerberg found out that I took a business trip to Ireland in 1998. Facebook wasn’t launched until six years later, so I could not have posted photos of my trip or published my travel itinerary, not that I would be stupid enough to advertise to burglars when I’m not around to protect my home. I am 99.9999+ percent certain that I have never mentioned that little tidbit of information on Facebook. So, the question is, how did Facebook find out about my trip and mention it as one of the fun facts about me that others can learn without my intentional consent.
Ah, but there’s the rub, isn’t it? To what have I consented, when I clicked “Agree” to their book-length terms of service agreement? I understood that the social media application was going to use information learned about me from my use of Facebook and the internet itself to help advertisers market products to me while I’m using their product. Again, information about my travel to Ireland can’t even be on my own computer, because my laptop isn’t that old. How do they know? What type of research has Mark Zuckerberg done on me? How deep did they go?
Another question is, why should I care? Well, I care because social media is being used to disseminate propaganda and shape public opinion. I care because America is being destroyed from within as one side of the political divide is being allowed to literally get away with murder, and the other side isn’t even allowed to express their opinions online. Facebook gets worse by the day. Whether I want to use it or not, it matters because others will either way, and when you only get one side of the story, brainwashing happens over the course of time.
Twitter, on the other hand, has always been a cesspool of liberal hate and unbelievable bias. I’ve never liked it. Some readers (those connected via social media) may already know that my Twitter account for Southern Prose has been locked indefinitely for hateful conduct.
What was the nature of my “hateful conduct?” Why, I had the audacity to reply when a liberal troll sent a vile message to Rush Limbaugh’s call screener, James “Bo Snerdley” Golden, to the effect that he looked forward to Limbaugh’s pending death from cancer so he could urinate on the man’s grave. At first I tried to take the proverbial high road and replied that I wouldn’t even urinate on the grave of a known KKK Grand Kleagle like Robert Byrd because I have a sense of common decency (plus I also know there are laws against indecent exposure.)
I believe in a supreme God and individual judgment, and it isn’t up to me to decent whose grave may be safely desecrated without fear of divine retribution. It is up to God, not me, to judge Robert Byrd. However, this liberal person, apparently with full knowledge of Limbaugh’s terminal cancer diagnosis, thought it would be funny and a good thing to do to taunt the man’s good friend and closest employee. For those unaware, when Limbaugh lost his hearing, he couldn’t continue as a broadcaster until Golden came out of retirement and rejoined him in Florida.
Honestly, I can’t remember all the vile things this despicable excuse for a human being felt the courage to say given the protections of distance that Twitter afforded him, but I am certain that I was locked from the account after he called people like me pansies for refusing to urinate of the graves of evil people, and I suggested that the slur was a projection.
I have zero regrets. Hell will freeze over before I genuflect to Jack Dorsey so that I can use his application to earn him income. Like I said, Twitter is a cesspool. How bad is it? Consider Arthur Chu, and contrast our alleged offense(s). Who is Arthur Chu? Some guy with a blue check who claims to be a mad genius, a comedian, and apparently a former Jeopardy contestant.
In my case, I didn’t even call the Limbaugh troll a pansy; I merely suggested he might be projecting about himself when he insulted others using that same term. What made the experience so interesting was the hammer dropped almost immediately. It wasn’t like I was hanging out on Twitter hoping to get into an extended argument with the guy, but I couldn’t have even if I’d wanted to, because my account got locked.
By comparison, yesterday some relatively obscure blue-check named Arthur Chu earned some desperately wanted attention for himself when he tweeted the following:
“Ashley Babbitt feeding the worms is one of the few good things that happened as a result of the Capitol “protest” and if you feel the need to mourn her Nazi ass it’ll be easier for both of us if you unfollow me now.“
Sorry Mr. Chu, but I cannot “unfollow” you when I was never following you in the first place, and after reading a little bit of what in your mind constitutes mad genius thought, I wouldn’t follow you anywhere. Disgracefully, Chu was just getting started:
“When a bullet goes through the fatty tumor a Nazi has in the space where a human being would have a brain, nothing is lost A pile of meat that moved and spoke and acted like a person was made to stop moving, and thus could no longer fool people into thinking it was one of them.“
Yikes! Now doesn’t that just warm the cockles of your heart? I’ll bet you’re thinking about “unity” right now, aren’t you? Ready to sing Kumbaya? Don’t be. That’s the easiest way to demonize your ideological enemy isn’t it? Just call them all Hitler.
Of course, Chu wasn’t finished:
“A Nazi is the opposite of a person, and therefore our morality to them must be reversed To hate them is to love To harm them is to heal To kill them is to bring life.“
But wait a minute…what about Twitter’s “hateful conduct” policy? It doesn’t apply to Arthur Chu. About the death of an woman who served our country in the military, he said this:
“You should feel less bad than you do about putting down a rabid animal In that case the rabies virus and the host are separate entities, one was the victim of the other A Nazi is the disease.“
Gee, doesn’t that sound awfully Nazi-ish, doesn’t it? That’s exactly what the Nazis did so they wouldn’t have a guilty conscience about the mass murder of six million Jews: they dehumanized their enemies.
For the record, Ashli Babbitt (SIC) was an Air Force veteran and a high level security officer with fourteen years of service to our nation.
A day has passed, and Twitter still hasn’t done anything to Arthur Chu’s account. I guess if Jack Dorsey didn’t have double standards, he wouldn’t have any standards at all. I blame Twitter for helping create the anger and frustration with their arbitrary suppression of free speech that led Ashli Babbitt to charge the Capitol building.
Her life mattered. She had a husband and a family. Whether or not you believe she was a a patriot, in her own mind, she was. Babbitt was killed while doing what she believed was the right thing to do, fighting to preserve the government created by our Constitution. You can disagree with her politics but should not speak ill of the dead. Calling her a lunatic, a traitor, or a Nazi is not going to help the situation improve. It’s practically begging to stir up more trouble. I won’t miss Twitter.
Arthur Chu isn’t a genius. He’s just mad. Probably because he isn’t funny, and perhaps because being a contestant on a game show is a fleeting claim to fame. It doesn’t really matter why he’s so mad and filled with hate. I won’t feel any better if I should stoop that level, or suggest a premature death for him as a cause for celebration. Responding to hate with even more hate, insults, and uglier rhetoric would only prove that I am equally unworthy of redemption.
And yet it matters that he’s able to throw gasoline on a burning fire with impunity because social media companies implicitly approve of his inflammatory rhetoric by allowing him to speak while silencing his potential critics. He’s not worth the time I just gave him, except to serve as an example for my greater point, which is this: Twitter’s platform (and most social media) isn’t a level playing field. It’s tilted way to the left. Liberalism dominates the mainstream media. If the ability to speak freely remains horribly skewed out of balance, we might assume the worst and prepare for another civil war. I’m not calling for it; I’m warning against it.
More blood will be unnecessarily shed because people no longer believe they need to be civil, or to listen to the other side of the argument. They think winning is the only thing that matters. If you can’t win the argument with superior evidence, you shouldn’t try to win by silencing your opponents.
The comments and opinions so void of compassion and the casual disregard for human life expressed so gleefully by Mr. Chu ironically remind one of what author Hannah Arendt was talking about in her book The Banality of Evil, about the trial of Nazi Adolph Eichmann. What she meant by the title was Adolph Eichmann did not appear to be an evil person but instead perceived him to be a relatively normal human being. Yet Adolph Eichmann was one of the architects and bureaucrats actually responsible for the Holocaust and the systematic murder of six million Jews, many of whom were killed in gas chambers.
Arthur Chu callously celebrated the death of an unarmed (and therefore “peaceful”) protestor, but in fairness, he didn’t pull the trigger. Come to think of it, neither did Adolph Eichmann. He was simply following orders and doing his job, but his job happened to be poisoning millions of men, women, and children, slaughtered like cattle unfit to be eaten. Breathing matters. One day, Arthur Chu will take his last breath and stand before our Creator to be judged.
Having just received this little insight into his consciousness, it’s safe to say Mr. Chu’s funeral should not be a cause for celebration.
RIP, Ashli Babbitt.
I am stunned by the aggressive behavior of the media, and the blatant censorship that is taking place across social media. I have begun realizing how fragile so many of my valued social connections are,that I have developed over the last 13 years or so. After the demise of myspace, facebook filled a gap, and yahoo/groups did until it did not. But, what if facebook were suddenly to censor me, and I were no longer able to access my contact information? That would take out messenger as well. If other publishers, like twitter and instagram, and youtube are in on it, and sites like Parler get cancelled, where does our ability to contact go? I have so few email addresses of others. Others have not widely transferred to sites like gab and mewe, and it is hard to locate people I know. I am just imagining that interactions seem like they may, in the very near future, be limited to the few we have face to face contact with. Hmmmm. This frightens and saddens me.