A Jerk and an Idiot Meet in a Bar

A Jerk and an Idiot Meet in a Bar

Well not in a bar, per se, social media. After all, it is the bar of our modern times. It’s where we hook up with friends, family, dates, or trysts. Places like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and others, all designed for social interaction with anonymity and limited consequences, for bad behavior. Often these entities dole out consequences to parties that are not causing a problem, and give a blind eye to serious problems.

They censor art, but no lascivious sexual content, as young women flaunt their near nakedness in attempts to lure undersexed males to engage and eventually earn them money. In my day, that was solicitation or prostitution. Today it’s entertainment. They ban people for reposting something the bots kick out as “violations of community standards”, but not the initial poster or creator of said content. They say they protect and respect free speech, but only do so, if it aligns with their views or rhetoric. Social media, penalize one person for angrily responding to inciting comments, but do nothing to the offender.

I have had experiences, with all of these and on almost all social media. As an artist, my work has been pulled, removed, blocked, or flagged on my media multiple times. I have been banned more on a couple sites and had my monetized account prevented from being seen because a machine saw a drawing and saw a piece of nudity and kicked it out. It has no human component, distinguishing art from pornography, from appropriate or inappropriate. Case in point.

A jerk and an idiot meet in a bar (social media). The jerk, wants to be seen, to receive incited commentary and responses, maybe to further his career goal of a quantitative of interactions to further ego, financial or social status. This is non fiction by the way. I may have forgotten to mention that. It happened this very morning.

The jerk posts a picture of brazil nuts and asked what they were called once. The idiot, is the person who answered the question with the correct degrading name. In fact, let’s just say there was a bar full of idiots. Many responses were tongue in cheek, affirming the name used before. I took offense and chastised the jerk. My response incited more idiots to chastise me for my reprimand of the jerk, by, you guessed it, more idiots.

My comment was that this kind of post had no business being posted on social media, for such degradation. Oh, the responses, to that came swiftly, some, we will call them the intelligent, supporting what I had said. That was all wonderful, showing me there was hope that we are all learning as a society. But I also received, comments, to the effect, that we can’t negate history or rewrite it just because it is offensive and vilified now. Shameful!

Responding that history is not being changed. It is a bad history, I wrote. I further stated that even if it was said or done in the past, such verbiage is inappropriate and inconsiderate, and had no place in culture then and has no place now in society and culture. What I witnessed this morning was ignorance on the rampage and lemming idiots following the leader, the jerk.

Do not misunderstand me, I know our history cannot and should not be rewritten to eliminate the unpleasant. If we don’t know it or are not able to study it, and its consequences, we will never learn from it. But I did say that even though bad history should be preserved and not changed, we are the ones that should be changing. It should bother us when an asinine comment or bait is tossed out, in any form, and we should all be proactive in shutting that person down and championing the victims of such insincerity and ignominy. My final comment on that feed, was to ask where the moderators were in this group. Insert crickets chirping. They were nowhere to be found, just then. Another social media disappointment.

This jerk, was not banned, or blocked, or sanctioned at the time. I certainly hope he has been by now. My point is, that this kind of behavior slips through, and often, More times than not, to be sure. An artistic nude is removed and this kind of person is free to spill his venom, as humorous. It is not humorous. It’s offensive and harmful, not just to the people that it is belittling, but to those us, that feel the pain with them and for them. It is shameful.

I get it, we have a unfortunate way, as humans, leaning wrong from right, but once we do learn, we must stop that was wrong in the first place, and not continue to perpetuate the infractions and insulting victimization of people, culture, religion and so on. Yes, we are ALL guilty of these kinds of sins in our pasts, but most of us learn from it.

I remember this kind of jesting by my family when I was young. It made me cringe then, now it makes me cringe and mad. I grew up not, feeling what my parents felt or doing what they did. My husband and I purposely made sure to never teach such bigotry, prejudice, and offensive treatment of others. We never called a what we now call, ‘persons of color’ as black, white, red, or any other color. They are not persons of color, nor are they black, nor white, nor red or yellow or whatever other slurs were used. We are ALL people of color. No one alive is white. No one on the planet is black, red, yellow, purple or anything off the sort. Go ahead, prove me wrong. I know no one can. We don’t and never taught that kind of distinguishing of people to our son. And to this day, he does not see people in terms of color or religion, culture or nationality, etc.

What he does see, is the character of a person, the goodness or lack of it, in a person. Why can’t we all learn that? Why do we not come to the defense of people when ignorants are insensitive or outright cruel? What we don’t seemed to have learned in the centuries in this world, is that we are all the same. We are all different shades of the same skin tones, cream, peach, beige, almond, chestnut, umber. All shades and tones of brown. Some of us are a couple shades, as in the case of vitiligo. I had the blessing of having experienced that joy, growing up, and I was one color and now am another. I understand the pain of the pain of being called something you really aren’t. I don’t want anyone to ever, EVER, feel that. So, I don’t do it.

I respect people, their shades, religions, nationality, sexuality, kinks, quirks, imperfections, handicaps, status, and any other kind of categorizations out there. I don’t want to tell anyone what to do, you do you, but I will in this case.

STOP hurting people, us, you, others, PEOPLE. Everyone has a right to their freedoms of beliefs and speech. But keep it to yourself and don’t poison others with your mentality, if you believe it’s okay to dishonor anyone in this manner. I don’t want to hear you, see you, be exposed to you, and I don’t want that for them either. We all deserve better. Be better.