Just recently, I’ve been inundated with requests both on Facebook and Twitter to sign petitions to shut down various Facebook pages. The pages in contention are about dog fighting, dolphin hunting, animal trapping and animal torture.
Now, here’s the thing that’s probably going to hurt my popularity (?), but I have to say it. My Facebook and Twitter accounts are just that. Mine. Period. End of discussion. I regard your Facebook and Twitter accounts the same way. They are your domains. As long as we all stay within the Terms of Use set by each entity, we have the right to say or do as we please when we are online.
I do not like the idea that someone would create a “cause” to shut me down because they didn’t approve of the content of my posts. I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t like it either. Of course, the case can be made that we are good, kind and caring folk who’d never do anything to hurt someone else. But, how do we know that? Just because I think I’m a fine upstanding pillar of the community doesn’t necessarily mean that ol’ Sister Bertha Betterthanyou feels the same way.
Remember that post you made not long ago that said “Of course I talk to myself. I need an intelligent conversation every now and again.”? When Sister Bertha saw that, she burst into tears. She actually thought you treasured those conversations you shared with her at least as much as she did. Now, she’s on a crusade to shut down your page. How dare she?
As appalling and despicable as I find pages that promote twisted activities like dog fighting, torture in any shape, form, or fashion, or any of the hundred and one things in this world I don’t like, I can’t see myself demanding that the rights of free expression be taken from another person. I don’t go looking for Facebook pages with that kind of content. As a result, I didn’t even know they existed until someone formed a cause and invited me to be a part of it.
Now, let me say this about that. Down deep in your well-meaning heart, you know Facebook isn’t going to shut down the pages in question, don’t you? Knowing that, don’t you feel just a little bit complicit with the dog fighters and animal torturers when you give them free publicity by pushing your doomed causes? Perhaps there is someone online, seeing your post who has the embryo of perversion inside him. Out of curiosity, he follows your link and eventually lands on the questionable page. His baser traits are titillated and another sadistic personality exerts control. Are you, perhaps, just a tiny bit responsible for exposing him to something he just might have missed without your help? Am I stretching things a bit? Maybe. It’s worth thinking about though, isn’t it?
Hundreds and hundreds of people are now aware of those pages, were blissfully ignorant of them until you came alone and caused the scales to fall from their eyes.
Here’s a suggestion. Rather than providing free advertising for these sick, twisted degenerates with a “cause” and spreading it round the globe, why not provide incriminating evidence to law enforcement authorities? When the culprits are arrested and jailed their Facebook and Twitter accounts will die natural deaths. Now, you tell me, isn’t that a far better idea than giving those depraved miscreants free publicity?
Here endeth the rant.
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Blog Scratchers Corner
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