De-meme-ing! Part 2.

As I noted yesterday, my friend Philbin (if that is his real name) was unable to post this hilarious meme of mine on Facebook. It was cited by the FB cops for violating community standards. Yesterday I tried to explain the joke, just in case any Facebook representatives were standing by.

Philbin protested the ban in the same way, arguing to the faceless Facebook police that this is a victimless joke and inoffensive to anyone who understands it. That cuts no ice with the idiots who man the barricades at Facebook. But to his credit, Philbin then decided to push the issue, risking time in Facebook prison, to find out what problem the idiots at Facebook have with this meme. 

Was it the template?

The template is a picture of conservative comedian and podcaster Steven Crowder, who appeared on a college campus with a sign saying "Male Privilege Is a Myth / Change My Mind". Crowder is a happy warrior, ready to take on anyone. After he posted this picture in 2018, it immediately became a meme, with all kinds of challenging statements, like "A Hot Dog Is a Sandwich/Change My Mind". People who never heard of Steven Crowder have used it. Others have made anti-Crowder statements with it. It's a meme; that's how they work. 

Is it offensive just on its face? My friend posted another, even more anodyne gag with the same meme to see what would happen. 

He did not get an angry warning about this one. However, he also did not get a response from his FB buddies, not even a mercy like. He checked his feed and discovered that the joke had mysteriously disappeared. Was it an accident... like a Russian window fall accident, hmm?

So he put this one together and posted it.

That did it.

You can disagree with the decision on one hand, and crap in the other, and see which fills up first.

Okay, so what is the problem? Do they hate Crowder? Many people on the left do. He makes fun of them, often in childish ways. Only leftists are allowed to make fun of people, especially in childish ways. 

Once more into the breach! Philbin made and posted this one: 

You can't get more Crowder than that, and yet it was allowed to stay.

We put our heads together (clunk ouch!) and decided that the "Change My Mind" meme has somehow gotten flagged as is at FB, regardless of how it's worded, either because people were using it for genuinely offensive content or (more likely) because it was being used to actually challenge people's beliefs, and that gave people the bad feels. It's hard to tell, but from all the information coming out about the willingness of Silicon Valley to censor "enemies" and how what most Americans believed in 1983 would put them on the "enemies" list now, I think it's safe to say Facebook is ceding to the usual crybullies on the left over this. And many of their employees are the crybullies on the left. But that's all just conjecture.  

What can we say for certain? That no one at Facebook has a genuine sense of humor or irony, and probably doesn't know anything at all that happened before 2010. That they don't believe in free political speech in any significant way, and think plugging up one meme is going to change anybody's mind. Irony alert! 

It's all just further confirmation that everything is the world is being run by the worst possible people. We have military brass who can't win a war, comedians who aren't funny, schools that can't teach, politicians who can't lead, singers who can't sing, corporations that can't make money, representatives who hate their voters, an entertainment industry that doesn't entertain, surgeons who mutilate patients, an energy sector that won't provide reliable energy, information technology that spews horse crap, religions without God, and social media that's antisocial. Everything must be sacrificed if it leads to that bright socialist future. 

That's a lot of gloom for one little meme-ban, I know, but it's hard to shake the feeling that everything is geared toward trying to make our lives harder, more expensive, more miserable, and definitely less funny.