Cursed Image

I’m banned from Facebook for 30 days. Well, sort of. And it may be the kick in the pants I need to get out of dither mode. I’ll explain.

In recent days, BLM protestors in cities around the country have posted thousands of photos of confrontations with cops. A few of those photos, posted to Twitter, show cops inked with white supremacist and Nazi tattoos. Don’t believe me? Click here to see some. Last night I saw a graphic some clever person had made, presumably in response to those photos.

I thought the image had something to say and was worth sharing. And now I’m banned from Facebook for 30 days.

Technically, it turns out, I’m banned from posting to the Paul’s Thing page on Facebook, because that’s where I shared the image. I can still post to my regular Facebook newsfeed. But.

Facebook seems more and more like Pinocchio’s Pleasure Island. I can feel donkey ears growing if I’m on it more than a few minutes a day. It’s not just that Mark Zuckerberg’s “community standards” are situationally flexible (certain users get to share uglier thoughts and images than anything I could ever imagine posting, for example), it’s that literally every fourth post on the newsfeed is a fucking ad, and by this time next year it’ll likely be every second post. It’s that apart from the handful of friends who still write their own posts, the rest flood it with cut & paste memes and haven’t expressed an original thought or shared an item of personal news in years. But mostly it’s the selectively-applied “community standards.” And the fucking ads.

It’s time to get off Pleasure Island, before it’s too late. But I dither. Without Facebook my friend’s won’t know when I’ve published a new blog post. I won’t know what my what my sisters in Missouri and Montana are up to. I might miss another photo of a DC-3 in one of the aviation groups I follow.

One of the most important questions you can ask yourself is “So what?” I’m asking that question more and more often these days. We should all be asking it. And hey, there’s always email!

Personal updates and an observation:

Mister B is still listless and hacking. We’re taking him back to the vet today to have him tested for valley fever. If that’s what he has, it’s treatable. Donna has a sore throat. Someone gets a sore throat these days, it’s hard not to assume the worst … but Donna was able to see our doctor Friday, and it’s just a sore throat. No Coronavirus here!

I’ve been to Costco a few times recently, and have to say it’s been a better experience than it used to be. They got their shit together after the first confused days of the pandemic lockdown. They’re organized now, and customers know what to expect in terms of social distancing and wearing masks. Even the cashier lines seem to move more smoothly than before. I went in yesterday with a new eyeglass prescription and found that they’re only letting two or three customers at a time into the optical department, and then only after taking their temperatures. I’ve endured some epic waits at the optical department in the past; not so yesterday. I guess what I’m saying is that the pandemic is forcing changes on merchants and consumers alike, and some of them are good ones.