Facebook in its divine benevolence apparently just pardoned a poor digital sinner who for the past five years has been barred from the hallowed halls of electronic chitchat. I relate this because it’s an interesting story from one who really does not get social media. Maybe this is age talking and maybe it’s more a case of fearing an invisible chain where every move is monitored and recorded today, I really don’t know, but I do know I made the great Facebook god mad a few years ago and now he (or she?) has apparently forgiven my great transgression, or more likely, just forgotten about it when rolling over a new data bank to monetize.
OK, here’s the story. In my last year as a teacher I once again found myself mentoring a new one. It’s something I did my entire career on a completely voluntary basis out of feeling of enormous debt to experienced teachers who came to my rescue when I was about to be driven out of a classroom due to a complete lack of skills and training. Had it not been for these people, I would have quit during my third week, but the rescue line and continued support from several very good teachers kept me afloat for another term. The way I looked at it, then and now, I was just passing something on as it had been passed to me
My young colleague was a first year teacher given a terrifically difficult assignment, working in a chaotic school with a bad principal and extremely challenging students, all having been directed to our special institution because of a multitude of problems in conventional schools, and I might be including the principal here too. Regardless, we were all tasked to rescue troubled teenagers, some currently playing hell with the teacher I just mentioned.
One of this teacher’s students posted a video on Facebook. The video, one of hundreds like it students post daily across the country, showed my colleague being tortured by a group of rowdy teenagers, just as I used to torture my teachers when I was the same age but lacked the ability to record my performance for sharing with other nitwits.
Anyway, I’d heard about the video and wanted to see it myself, but Lord Facebook would not let me in unless I joined the fold, so I did and was anointed a full fledged member. The video I’ll deal with in some other post as it’s a new dimension to the field of education and must be understood by anyone in a classroom today, but right now let’s leave it alone so that we can get to my egregious crime.
A few years after the video, I found myself retired from teaching and now working as managing editor of a struggling vintage motorcycle magazine that had been clobbered, like a lot of print media, by digital competition. In response, very common in the print industry today, the magazine moved to up its on-line presence in various ways, one of them via Facebook. My boss asked if I would be willing to post regular comments and updates anytime I covered a given motorcycle event. I told her I’d gladly do this but had never done this sort of journalism before, but if she was willing to set it all up, I’d learn what I needed to be a digital reporter and commentator of all things vintage motorcycle. It was this action, by my publisher, that caused Facebook’s wrath as the magazine set up a new Facebook account for me using my magazine email address. This, I came to learn is a great sin, but “Thou shall not have two Facebook accounts” was a commandment I was completely unaware of. As for my other Facebook account, I hadn’t looked at in years due to an almost total lack of interest in what my “friends” had for dinner last night.
About two years after the magazine folded, I stumbled back into Facebook to try to find an old buddy and was promptly informed I’d been banished, I thought, forever. When this first happened, I tried to explain, but communicating with an entity like Facebook is much like shouting down a deserted mine shaft. You can make all the noise you want, but nobody’s listening.
In all honesty, maybe I could have yelled louder, but like I said in the beginning, I was never too interested in social media to begin with, so being a Facebook outlaw didn’t trouble me much.
My social media resurrection or release from purgatory came recently with an email from Facebook saying I hadn’t updated my account, and that it was a good idea to do so as many, many exciting things and great blessings awaited.
The announcement instantly reminded me of another machine communication.
In the mid 80s I taught a nice seventh grader in Louisiana who came to me almost in tears with a request. It seems the school district’s automated call system placed an early morning robo call to her house every school day in reference to her older brother, who was expelled by the very same district at the beginning of the year for reasons I don’t remember. The robo call ridiculously informed mom that her dear son was absent from school the day before and asked for her intervention. This did not make mom at all happy.
“Can you get the school to stop calling, Mr. Brown?” she pleaded, saying every morning the call woke her mother who worked nights, and then she became angry, and this anger was projected to the poor girl just before she left for school. Just out of curiosity and thinking I was responding to another mindless communication of no validity, I decided to knock on Facebook’s door for old time’s sake, and son of a gun, it opened wide. Lordy, Lordy, I could see the light. I said three Hail Marys for extra insurance and was once again clean.
For some unknown reason, the ethereal spirits of the Internet allowed me the cross the River Styx into Facebook Happy Land where I now remain silent, very much unlike me really. After reading all the posts over the past few weeks from friends, some actually real, and seeing such a huge divide spanning almost the entire spectrum of our vast political divide, I thought if I started spouting along with the other birds of opinion I can’t help but make some of my flock upset, which I don’t want to do. Also, had I only Facebook posts to evaluate, I’d want nothing to do with quite a few people I really do value as good friends. It seems on Facebook Street many people I know and love are somehow mutated by strange and unseen radiation.
Gees, I’m screwy enough in person. The last thing I need is further distortion, or Facebook really, but it is sort of fun to peek over the fence from time to time, and who knows, maybe I’ll eventually make a little noise too, before being outlawed again. See, I kinda like that outlaw handle. A big part of me wants to see just what it will take to get bounced again. I’ve been thrown out of much better places than Facebook, and figure there are lots of folks in Russia who recently joined me in exile. Have they been pardoned too?
I’d bait those Russian cats to see if they’re still around, but then I’d have to check the spelling for Hillary, and that’s just too much work.