I was banned from posting on Facebook for about two weeks. I thought I would die. I posted a picture of Michele Bachman taking a 12-inch corn dog into her mouth with both hands. When I posted it, this soon to be famous picture, was hot off the presses. It was the day of her visit to the Iowa State Fair. Along with the photo, I copied a friend’s caption saying “Hey Marcus, is this how I do it?” and pasted the whole thing into Unicorn Booty’s Facebook Page. Unicorn Booty’s co-owner and FB Administrator commented, “Oh my!” and left the picture to germinate on their page.
The next day, when I went to post something on FB I got a sneering note from what sounded like a mean queen at FB Security. The message said that I’d been flagged and would be blocked from posting for an indefinite and undisclosed period of time because I had been putting “spammy, hateful or irrelevant posts on other people’s walls.” Er, uh, what?! Grrrrrl, the tone! I’d been digitally spanked!
I knew my post was very much inside the realm of appropriate humor for this young, gay-focused forum and I couldn’t imagine what had happened, so I wrote to Unicorn Booty to ask them if I’d crossed a line!
UB: We’ve had our troubles with Facebook photos in the past. Because we’re such a high profile, gay site, we get trolled by plenty of wackadoodles who flag images as inappropriate. Sorry you got caught up in that. There’s really no advice we can offer. You can file a complaint in Facebook’s help forums, but that’s about it. There’s not exactly a customer service hotline.
In fact, the religious right has been shutting down tons of public gay pages and forums lately by means of organized flagging. I am a comedian! If the Christian right can shut me down with the simple click of a cursor, they are right, I am doomed!
When I finally posted my gripe on Facebook’s public help forum I got a letter apologizing for the inconvenience and asking me to change my password so I can start posting again.
I was jonesing so badly for my FB fix, I was almost fooled. Half of my password was typed in when I noticed that the email came from Fazebook! Seriously? Fa(z)ebook? I was fazed, and I felt like I’d been hit by a really big book!
I realize that FB handles Bajillions of communications every day, but there has to be someone to talk to somewhere, sometimes. Right?
It is like that autographed picture of Darth Vader I wanted so much when I was a kid. Where do you write to Darth Vader? Anyway, I had no idea I was so addicted to Facebook. I paced around my house. I tried Myspace but she is so dull. I went to Match.com to see if I could spark up a conversation, but there was just unrequited love there. I thought about changing my name and sneaking up on FB from behind. I was losing my mind.
Seems I wasn’t alone. As I was being squelched by some anonymous troll, other activists all over FB were also being shut down by a new automated security feature designed to help fight spammers. Too many or rapid successions of postings triggered an automated time-out which wound up leaving a bunch of the most politically active and vocal FB communicators summarily silenced. Oh, No You Di-int! Activists by nature are not a silent flock of seagulls and we all found new ways to squawk pretty quickly and very loudly.
Within two days Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes answered the outcry of “Censorship!” in a statement to The Associated Press. “On the contrary, we want Facebook to be a place where people can openly express their views and opinions, even if others don’t agree with them.”
Without notification or an apology my ability to post was re-instated and my addiction resumed. But now I’ve been burned. The light, beautiful freedom I felt to interact on a truly public level was squashed! The other day I was about to post a fabulously funny new gay commercial on GLAAD Media’s page, but then, I didn’t.
The business of comedy requires that I read ravenously and that I scavenge the Internet for humor, contrast and controversy. I have been a regular contributor to pages that I enjoy, sharing some of the funniest tid-bits I scrounge up with fans, but I may have to save my harvest for my own page from now on. Not because I am unwilling to stand behind the things I post, but because I don’t want to be bitch-slapped or silenced for doing so.
Has the Christian Right’s Agenda cyber bullied me into submission? Maybe a bit, and this comedian is not laughing.
Also printed in The Bottom Line: As Shann Sees It
