Giberti: Social Media Quarantine

Allan Giberti

Many of us have found ourselves in Facebook jail at some point, some of us more often than others. Facebook jail surmounts to someone (usually someone who doesn’t subscribe to the politically correct bull crap) posting something that causes some overly sensitive liberal’s ass to chafe even more. This then causes them to promptly report your post for violating some hypocritical social justice laws smearing some “…isms” and/or (if you're creative enough) “…phobias”.

The resulting 5, 10 or 30 day ban from interacting with or creating your own posts is really pretty much meaningless since most people who have ended up on a Facebook ban have backup accounts.

But is being given a Facebook time out really a bad thing? I’d have to say no and I’d even go so far as to say a general social media timeout is probably good for most people’s mental health.

Twitter is now experimenting with a program that will give you an option to revise your answer to a tweet if Twitter believes your original words may be “harmful.”

When you think about it, at least Twitter is giving you a heads up when you may be hurting someone’s oh-so-delicate feelings, seeing how posting something on Facebook is a daily crap shoot. That is if you care about that kind of thing.

Before anyone gets their knickers in a knot, let me state that I’m in no way advocating restricting the 1st Amendment, so it’s important to remember that when you get down to the nuts and bolts of it, all social media companies are private industries. They can set whatever rules they want for whatever reason they want. They can run their company any way they want and they do. So, keep that in mind when you’re whining because your post or tweet was taken down.

But social media and many of their users are in need of a reality check or at the very least a universal reality check reaction button.

The nationwide shutdown had many unforeseen consequences, both good and bad, and we are constantly finding more. I’d like to add one more unforeseen consequence… by forcing people to stay at home via the ever-popular stay-at-home orders and encouraging people to connect via technology, we all got a peek into some people’s inner workings. Not always a good thing

Months of “isolation” and many had chosen to communicate with “friends” by social media and Facebook or Twitter are both a poor choice in ways to express yourself or your thoughts.

It however can be very entertaining when there’s nothing worth watching on cable. You can also learn a lot about people.

What did I learn? While social media has always been touted as a way to bring people together, it has done quite a good job on creating division specifically along political lines resulting in less civil discourse and a free exchange of ideas.

Throw in a pandemic and suddenly everyone isn’t agreeing with everyone in their social-thought bubble. Everyone’s approach on how to handle the pandemic was different and ranged from virus deniers to people who wanted everything shut down. The odd thing was that everyone was an expert. Suddenly we were surrounded by virologists, statisticians and constitutional scholars.

What’s even more amazing is that every one of these experts don’t seem to grasp that incessantly whining on Facebook about being oppressed isn’t going to change anything. Stop posting about how you’re not going to wear a mask and just don’t wear the damn thing. Just do it and fight the urge to share it. Yes, we know you are standing up for your rights. Most of us figured it out when you went out without a mask. Please stop sharing how “liberty minded” you are.

I have watched conspiracy theories twist and merge with other conspiracy theories. Either coronavirus was a result of 5G technology, a way to bring about the rise of the new world order, the nationwide lockdown was used as a way to install 5G technology (which I would think would need to be in place in order to the technology to cause coronavirus), cover for covert US military rescue operations here at home, a way minimize witnesses to alien activity or a trial run on how the world would react to an alien virus since they’re going to announce how we’ve been working with aliens for years.

The funny thing is the lines separating the social media experts and conspiracy theorists are extremely blurry and very entertaining.

I’m not a doctor nor do I play one on the radio but here’s a piece of coronavirus advice. Now that restrictions are being lifted let’s not be so quick to disregard quarantines and impose one more and it’s only for two weeks. After this, two weeks is rookie stuff.

As we head out into the summer sunshine, I suggest a two-week self-imposed social media quarantine. After months of complaining of wanting to go out, now we can. Do your mental faculties a favor and go out and experience the real world.


​Allan Giberti is the host of RI Red Radio on 990WBOB.com. You can listen to Allan live on Mondays and Tuesdays at 7pm Eastern.

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