Jarrett's 8 Steps to Operating A Kick-Ass Personal Facebook Page

I have been a Facebook member in good standing (no hacks, deletions, nor suspensions) since 2007. I have over 2K friends, over half of whom I have actually met in real life. While there are arguably better people to write a list such as this, I just want you to know what has worked and so far continues to work for me.
It is important that I use a format outside of facebook for this list because I don't want to speak for and about Facebook, on Facebook, because the legality of such things is constantly evolving.

I prefer Facebook over other social networking apps although I use many. (My Twitter and Instagram are linked here.)

8. Find a niche and stick with it. A niche is your own personal space to display what's important to you. Maybe your thing is quotes by the Founding Fathers and other important people in history. (OK, so that's actually mine but it can be yours too.) I think one of my first posts was a quote by Benjamin Franklin.  For the past decade or so, when I can't think of anything to say, I choose from an array of famous quotes the best describes my current mood or my take on the news of the day. Some of my friends do an ink drawing or take an interesting selfie, or post a news article or blog post that they've written.

7. Try to keep your friends list at around 50% people you know or have met in real life.  This helps you to not get baited by Russian Troll Farms. And when someone you've met in the flesh has an opinion on something, give it a little more weight than you would someone you've only just met online.

6. Don't operate more groups or pages than you can handle.  I've seen people who end up drowning in their own online personas and even need psychiatric help because of it.  Sound strange?  It is... but its also becoming more common. Facebook is very upfront about things and they despise anonymity. They want to create an atmosphere of trust and a more neighborly "hey, I know you" environment. Don't try to bite off more than you can chew without cracking up. It's fine to take a few of your groups and pages and hand them off to trusted friends.  People LOVE taking over a group that was handed to them with active members pre-installed.

5. Don't admin/moderate or create Groups or Pages unless you have a full pc, tablet or laptop.  Phones don't allow you to quickly find the correct ways of handling an attack posed by a renegade admin or moderator. Sometimes with a phone, you find yourself at the mercy of your data allowance.

4. Politics - Be honest, yet polite wherever possible. ("And it is always possible," to paraphrase the Dalai Lama). When you need to unfriend or block someone who is sabotaging your timeline with counter-propaganda, do it quietly. I'm choosy about when it's appropriate to make an example of someone and prefer not to do it. Most political differences can be solved in private messages with more honesty. It's the public nature of comments that fuels people behaving like trolls.  If they only want attention and always go about it the wrong way, a block might be in order. 

3. Don't be afraid to block.  Facebook has this feature for a reason.  They don't want you reporting posts to their staff that aren't worthy of being reported, "FB fights" always boil down to that level of pettiness when they aren't stopped by a block or Facebook's new feature, "Taking a Break". I once joked to my mother who was marveling at my growing friends list, "well, if you're impressed by that, you should see my block list."  I won't tell people what KIND of people they should be blocking on first contact, but I do have opinions on that... Everyone's tolerance threshold is a bit different in that respect.

2. Don't bring offline drama online.  It's surprising how many people still fall prey to this particular temptation. Look, we all have messy personal lives. But we don't all make our drama public in attempts to "get back at so & so".  It's perhaps the biggest divider of class on the internet. If, for example, your prospective employer decides to look you up on Facebook and they see nothing but cute puppy memes and insightful TED Talks, your odds of getting hired for the new job will probably improve.  But if that same employer sees a bunch of interpersonal arguing, cussing, lovers' quarrels, and drunken rants... your odds of getting the new job go down to about zero.  It's not exactly legal for prospective employers to look at your facebook page, but it happens and you will never know what hit you. This brings me to my #1 step.

1.  Be careful adding coworkers and especially the boss at your job.  They might hint around at it and show you a post on their phone in a covert method of showing you their Facebook name. But it's safer to say, 'I never add co-workers' and mean it, then it is to alienate SOME co-workers by ignoring their request. Unless you have a job in the media or in roles where you're expected to keep up a social media presence, it's best to keep Facebook as an "after work" activity.  Besides, no customer likes having to wait for an employee who is too busy with their phones to pay attention.

Everything Trump Wanted Has Failed

This week, the program that businesses trust (and the law demands in 16 states) to keep undocumented immigrants out of work has come to a screeching halt. E-Verify has suspended its operations due to the Government Shutdown.

NPR reports:

The government shutdown began with the president's demand for border security money. But it has also halted E-Verify, a federal program that's supposed to prevent immigrants from working here illegally.  If U.S. employers want to check whether their prospective hires are eligible to work, they can't. 

The E-Verify database is "currently unavailable due to a lapse in government appropriations," according to a note on the government-run website.

Trump wanted a physical wall to be built. Instead he had a digital one torn down. Irony abounds. But where does the status of Trump's wall stand, really?

There is no public funding that has been allocated for a wall and Mexico has refused to pay for it (as Trump repeatedly promised they would). Since public funding from either country seems unlikely for the foreseeable future, the idea of private funding has been raised.

The most successful advance toward that means of building a wall along the US/Mexico border is a GoFundMe page set up by a military veteran named Brian Kolfage. So far, he has raised just shy of 2% of his billion dollar goal.  That self-imposed goal is only 1/5 of the amount that Trump projects he will need to break ground on his wall.

Washington Post reports:

“It’s time to stop playing games with voters,” Kolfage said in an email. “If we are told we’re getting something, make it happen.” 

Could the government just take all the GoFundMe cash that Kolfage ends up raising? It’s complicated.

Republican lawmakers have introduced bills seeking to allow the Treasury Department to accept public donations for the purpose of funding the wall. Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) and Rep. Diane Black (R-Tenn.) have both filed bills seeking to create a “Border Wall Trust Fund,” which Black’s bill specifies would be appropriated to the Department of Homeland Security. Black’s proposal would even create a “commemorative display,” honoring all the donors who chipped in. But those bills are just sitting in committee and would seem unlikely to have much chance once Democrats take control of the House.

Another promise that Trump made repeatedly on the campaign trail and other subsequent rallies is that department stores and other shops will stop saying "Happy Holidays" to their patrons and instead wish them a "Merry Christmas".  But Mawlid, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa and New Years have all passed with most stores instructing their employees to parrot the familiar and consumer-friendly "Happy Holidays". Even Trump's own businesses failed to mention the word 'Christmas' at all and retreated back to 'Holiday' in his manufactured "War on Christmas".

Celebrity Sex Allegations - The New 'Moral Panic'

A moral panic is defined in Wikipedia as a feeling of fear spread among a large number of people that some evil threatens the well-being of society. A Dictionary of Sociology defines a moral panic as "the process of arousing social concern over an issue – usually the work of Moral Entrepreneurs and the mass media".

Some past examples of moral panics that have swept the nation are:
The Salem Witch Trials
McCarthyism
The Daycare Sex Abuse Hysteria of the 1980's & 90's
HIV/AIDS Panic
Muslim Terrorism Suspicion

Moral panics are usually spread by mainstream media in order to confuse or distract from larger or more tangible issues.  The tell-tale signs of a moral panic are the lack of solid evidence to back up claims and allegations that arise out of seemingly nowhere yet are highly publicized as a trend. Most moral panics are also political by nature and politicians quickly seek to capitalize on the two-sided morality coin.

Some of the accused in 2017 (clockwise): Al Franken,
George Takei, Mariah Carey, Kevin Spacey

The problem with a moral panic (aside from the fact that the claims made at the height of it are generally false) is that it has a tendency to spread like wildfire to the point where all citizens of the affected nation become retaliatory against & suspicious of each other.

Although there might be some truth to the accusations at first, those same allegations can become warped over time due to our human tendency toward exaggeration, hyperbole and our inability to remember things exactly as they happened. Before long, both the accuser & the accused are caught in a vicious cycle of mutual blame with the general public not trusting either. The aggrieved parties rarely call a truce... especially when the allegations involve sexual misconduct.

As a blogger/journalist, I can't tell you that I know for certain what sex crimes have been perpetrated by the elite celebrity class which includes everyone from Donald Trump to George Takei (political opposites).  But what I can do is share the warning that we could be in the midst of a moral panic.  It seems they happen every 20-40 years like clockwork.

Clockwise: Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein
& Bill Cosby have all been accused sex crimes. The crimes
that Mrs. Clinton was accused of were proven false, namely
that she supposedly operated a child sex ring out of a pizza
parlor. See also: PizzaGate

Some things to keep in mind during a potential moral panic:

• Are you making accusations based on rational proof?
• Are you contributing to events that have nothing to do with you?
• Are you making assumptions based on race, gender, sexual orientation, religion or politics?
• How devastating would it be if you were proven wrong?
• Is there another issue going on that you should be paying attention to?