A Critical Ethnography of Social Media: The Index of Banned Facebook Art

 

We live in an age of utter stupidity, utter idiocy, and utter moronicity. How else do you explain the election of a fascist with self-esteem issues, many related to the size of his dick, but who does not even have the mental reflexivity or capabilities to realise that he has self-esteem issues, as president of the United States? 

I was reminded of this fact once again recently when I received this rather banal message in bureaucratic American English from Facebook, another organisation headed by yet another fascist der Führer with possible self esteem and probable narcissist issues:

"It looks like you shared or sent something that shows nudity or sexual activity.

Ronald Helfrich

14 Nov 2024

https://www.prestomusic.com/.../8033275--gesualdo-the…

You shared this on your profile. This goes against our Community Standards on nudity or sexual activity”. 

What I shared or sent was a link to the Naxos Classics Gesualdo Madrigals box pictured above which I am presently listening to.

Now I realise that the age we live in is no more stupid, idiotic, or moronic than ages past. Humans have long lived in kingdoms of stupidity, idiocy, and moronicity. What is different, however, is that like term limits for politicians, limits that would simply spread the shit that is American politics around as George Carlin notes, social media sites like YouTube and Facebook spread the stupid, idiotic, and moronic shite around to a greater number of people. How else can you explain the confusion of a work of art on the Naxos Gesualdo box with pornography—painted breasts and painted arses—the morons at Facebook don’t even know because in all their wisdom they leave judgements about what is pornographic and what constitutes the violation of “community standards" to bots that are as stupid, idiotic, and moronic as they are? Nor should we forget that the scribes, Pharisees, parasites, and hypocrites at Facebook allow photographs of scantily clad women, and sometimes partially naked women, to appear hourly on their Reels feed, a feed aimed, no doubt, at the leering male “adolescent” demographic numbering in the thousands upon thousands on Facebook. But then, of course, one suspects that the high priests of Facebook adore such beefcake photos because they make monies by peddling such page three like photos on its site. And in Mammon Land money trumps everything including so-called community standards.

Like Dick van Dyke I am glad that I won’t be around to see much more of this stupid and moronic idiocy that Facebook encapsulates in its very digital bones. I may have long loved the fact that human life in absurd but even I recognise that absurdity has its limits. And Facebook's censorship of a work of art and its confusion and conflation of it as pornography is something that reaches those limits for me.