Think before you post

Hogs start stampede on social media

FOOTBALL season approaches, meaning Arkansans will be calling the Hogs—the kind who wear red and play football for the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville.

But it’s another kind of hog— the wild ones roaming the woods and reproducing like crazy in the majority of Arkansas’ 75 counties—that’s attracting attention.

The front page of the Northwest Arkansas section of this newspaper features a fascinating story by Stephen Simpson that told the tale of William McNabb, who lives in a rural area near El Dorado and saw one of his tweets go viral.

“You always hear about viral tweets,” McNabb said. “But you never think you are about to become one.”

Jason Isbell, a singer-songwriter with almost 280,000 followers on Twitter, asked in early August why anyone would argue about the definition of an assault weapon. Isbell stated that such guns aren’t necessary.

McNabb replied in a tweet of his own: “Legit question for rural Americans. How do I kill the 3050 feral hogs that run into my yard within 3-5 mins while my small kids play?”

His post received more than 26,000 likes and more than 7,000 retweets.

McNabb entered into an online back-and-forth with Isbell, and people across the country began posting memes, most of which made fun of the idea of 30 to 50 wild hogs running around someone’s yard.

“Hogs running across the nation was a wild idea to people,” McNabb said. “I got replies about why don’t I build a fence, but they don’t realize hogs can go through a fence.”

The response McNabb received—his post showed up in the timelines of more than 2 million Twitter users worldwide—shows how fast something can go viral. The moral of the story: Think before

you post comments on social media.

And, McNabb strikes us as a thinking man.

“I had far left and far right figures both saying they could see I was trying to reach out for a solution,” he said. “I believe in common-sense gun laws and background checks and closing gun show loopholes. Like most Americans, I’m tired of waking up to another mass shooting. There has to be something we can all agree on.”

McNabb offered sound advice for those of us active on social media outlets: “Think about what you post. Does it need to be said, and does it need to be said by you? … If you don’t believe in it, then don’t post it.”

In addition to reminding us that social media posts can go viral, this incident shines a spotlight on the problem of wild hogs in Arkansas. They do an estimated $19 million in damage to row crops here each year. That number is growing as the number of hogs grows.

This state has something called the Arkansas Feral Hog Eradication Task Force. It’s time for Gov. Asa Hutchinson to tell the members of his revamped Cabinet that their departments must cooperate fully with the task force and provide it all the resources it needs to get a handle on this problem.

Seriously. In addition to calling the Hogs, the governor and his top policy advisers must be focused this fall on killing the hogs.

“It’s a significant problem,” says Keith Stephens of the Arkansas Game & Fish Commission. “They compete for food resources, destroy habitat by rooting and wallowing and will eat ground-nesting birds, eggs and fawns. They also carry up to 45 bacteria, diseases and parasites, including Trichinellosis, Brucellosis and swine herpes virus.”

It sounds nasty.

It’s not yet time for the governor to call out the National Guard. But we’re getting close.