Here’s a tip: Don’t post dumb things on social media
Attention everyone: Stop posting stupid stuff on Facebook. Seriously. Teenagers have figured out how to use social media without it coming back to bite them. It’s high time all you adults take heed.
Two items have caught my eye recently, one local, one national, and my goodness: Seriously. Just delete your accounts, folks. You’ll be better off.
First up, let’s talk about the Hamilton school board election, which just got a dose of crazy added when we caught wind about two of the candidates and their history on the social media platform.
One of the candidates came off, at best, a little racist-y, the other came off ... well, David Duke would probably be like, “Whoa there buddy, that’s a bridge too far.”
And then, in one of the weirder political moments I’ve ever seen around here, the first candidate said her Facebook had been hacked and the campaign manager for the second responded to questions by our reporter, saying the candidate “is denying that he made the posts that said the Nword,” meaning, clearly, someone else did. (And the “N-word” wasn’t anywhere near the most horrible thing attached to these posts.)
Honestly, I don’t even want to go any further into this. The stories are out there. Feel free to make up your own minds as whether you think a nefarious plot against these two was hatched years ago on social media in an effort to make them look like racists, and vote accordingly. But the big takeaway here is simple: Unless you don’t mind being labeled a racist, don’t post racist stuff on Facebook.
Moving on then to the big national story, the pipe bombs mailed to the Clintons, the Obamas, George Soros, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the ghost of John F. Kennedy, Joe Biden, Robert DeNiro, and more: There are a lot of people on my Facebook feed who believe this is not the work of a lone wingnut but, in fact, is the work of a cabal of Democrats seeking to sink the GOPs chances in the midterms.
I fear these people have lost their minds.
“Top Democrats targeted . . and just like that the Caravan headlines disappeared,” was one post on my Facebook feed Thursday morning. Here are a few more …
“GEE ..... WE DIDN’T SEE THIS COMING ..... THE LAST DESPERATE PLAY OF A DYING PARTY ..... VOTE THEM ALL OUT NOV 6!!.” This one came with comments, including, “If televisions were totally interactive, i would have choked and killed off nearly all the liberals a long time ago.”
Or this post: “not one of these bombs detonated, to me it looks like an orchestrated political stunt carried out by a desperate party clinging to relevance and power.”
Or simply this: “I’m willing to wager $20 that these bomb packages turn out to be the work of a Democrat. Any takers?”
This is batshizz crazy, folks. If you actually subscribe to this wackadoodle theory, ask yourself this: If the bombs were mailed to Trump and Sessions and Ted Nugent and assorted others on the right, would you think someone … from the right sent them? This makes no sense.
By this line of reasoning, 9/11 was probably a Democrat plot, and the anthrax attacks were carried out by Anderson Cooper.
Now listen: Just like it’s possible someone hacked the Facebook accounts of two private citizens years ago in order to discredit them at some undetermined moment in the future, I suppose it’s within the realm of possibility political operatives are also mailing fake bombs to real people to create fake news (or something) I generally subscribe to Occam’s Razor when it comes to this stuff: The simplest, most obvious answer is almost always correct.
In the meantime: Get a grip, please.
And if you can’t get a grip, if you’re gripper is too far gone, if you’ve gone gripless at this moment in time, at least have the sense to not post this stuff on social media where it can — and probably will — come back to bite you.
Jeff Edelstein is a columnist for The Trentonian. He can be reached at jedelstein@trentonian.com, facebook.com/jeffreyedelstein and @jeffedelstein on Twitter.