Facebook Fyre Fests: Potato Head & Seuss

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Facebook Fiends have risen with the latest travesty that is responsible for tearing America apart… I think the title of the article says precisely which radical changes I’m referring to…

But if you’ve been living under a rock, or perhaps aren’t friends on social media with some bored bigots from high school, let’s do a quick recon of these changes:

  • Mr. Potato Head has changed their brand name to just Potato Head. That’s it. Just a simple rebrand, a drop of the Mr. which instantly makes it a bit more inclusive and creates more opportunities for the brand to just do more with itself. You can still buy Mr. Potato Head and Mrs. Potato Head just fine. But this drop in the “Mr.” has everyone up in arms because, for the love of God what will be the next to change in the world? Why change a good thing? “What’s next?!” the bigots cry, “Will Betty White have to change her last name?!”
  • Then for the Seuss, get your Kleenex for this one, six of his books will stop being published because of ‘racist and insensitive imagery.’ Are you ready for the titles of these books, and these books alone, that are no longer going to be published? Here we go:
    • “And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street” (never heard of it? same)
    • “If I Ran the Zoo” (never heard of it? same)
    • “McElligot’s Pool” (never heard of it? same)
    • “On Beyond Zebra!” (never heard of it? same)
    • “Scrambled Eggs Super!” (never heard of it? same)
    • “The Cat’s Quizzer” (never heard of it? same)

What’s so radical about all of these avid Facebook Fyre Starters, is that they are offended… that other people are offended…

Spin that logic to make it make sense, I won’t wait.

It’s when people get so upset over the changes like the aforementioned, that I find myself so confused as to how there is a complete lack of empathy and even ability to research the facts. Everyone was upset about Mr. Potato Head because they thought they were taking away his gender… but news-breaker, even if that was the case, potatoes don’t typically have genders anyway?? Don’t get so heated, Lisa. And Seuss? We literally don’t need those books; they cater to a dead narrative. Why would you want to read your children books that contain subliminal messages of hate?

Another Facebook Fyre I had seen recently, was uproar over changing the term of “breastfeeding” to “chestfeeding” – which admittedly I found a bit bizarre myself. But instead of coaxing a fire that was already blazing, I hopped onto Google to see why the change was happening, or being proposed – and overall I found that the change is happening because some non-binary people with the ability to reproduce are more comfortable with the term, amongst many other reasons. Okay, so it makes other people more at ease, there’s nothing wrong with that. Language changes all the time, medical terms develop all the time, this is just the latest terminology that could be used. Case closed.

Interesting how a little research, a little education, can be a path towards enlightenment. After all, ignorance is only bliss if the ignorance benefits your narrative 🙂

I think maybe the most hurtful and unnecessary comment that is tossed in these Facebook Fyres is the whole, “If you don’t like how we do things in America, just leave then.” Like… homie, you’re the one that doesn’t like what’s happening in America. The change is happening, evolution of a culture is inevitable. We are evolving, you are resisting… do you know who Charles Darwin is?

We are all entitled to freedom of speech, we all have that right, but maybe think about the big picture before sharing information that is false or hateful. What’s the point? What do you get from that? What is the benefit?

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Sharing false information makes you look stupid, and sharing hateful memes makes you a bigot.

You don’t get to decide what is true, nor do you get to decide how other people feel. That’s not the way this whole, “being a decent human” thing works.

“Before you speak ask yourself if what you are going to say is true, is kind, is necessary, is helpful. If the answer is no, maybe what you are about to say should be left unsaid.”

Bernard Meltzer

Emily SmithLeave a comment

Social Media: The Wild Frenemy

Social media is wild, absolutely wild. It’s a force of nature that we treat as the annoying storm that never passes, but really, it’s a waking tsunami filled with inspiration, motivation, and community. It’s indubitably the ceaseless war between left and right, positivity and negativity; it’s your side, my side, yet is it ever the truth? Social media has the power to grow the smallest of feats and the ability to take down even the strongest of foundations.

Social media is everyone’s frenemy.

It’s that person you keep close to you out of fear of what will happen when out of sight, it’s the person that sometimes when you let your guard down with them you find they’re actually not that bad, but it’s also the person that you do let your guard down with… and it’s exactly what you expected: your words get twisted and shared, your meaning lost, and your venting rant falls into the ears of a snake, it’s now something that can never be erased… the way others view you now tainted.

I grew up in a weird transitioning stage of technology. My first phone was a Cingular flip phone, with no camera, I had a trove of VHS tapes, portable DVD players were the shit, and I got a Facebook when I was in sixth grade (2006) then a Myspace the following year – oh, was my mom mad about the socials.

In these early years of social media and multimedia messaging, parents and teachers alike were quick to preach to us all, “What you post and what you text lives on the internet forever, be careful!” As we grew up, ‘be careful’s morphed into, “Your job looks at your social media as much as they look at your resume, think about your future!”

So, I’ll say it again – social media is wild.

It has single-handedly fired up civil rights movements, kept these movements relevant, and it’s created community. Everyone can find a community on social media, they can learn about causes they never even knew to care about, they can find an account to follow with the right inspiration they’ve been looking for. Across the board between Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, the limit does not exist with how you can shape, reshape, and reshape again, what your feed and what your personal brand looks like.

If you feel your socials are one note, or too political, or too this, or too that… change up your algorithm.

Go through the accounts you follow, the people you’re friends with, and follow/unfollow – get things off your feed that don’t bring you happiness, advance your knowledge, or aid in personal growth.

Instagram was an easy cleanse – I unfollowed a lot of the random meme accounts and celebrities and then asked myself what I wanted to see, what I needed to see, during moments throughout the day when I take my IG scroll breaks. Do I want to see what food people are eating? Or how about the same dumb meme with knock-knock-joke level humor shared one million times across like 10 accounts? Heck, no! I wanted some finer scrolling content, thank you.

I wanted quality, inspirational, powerful content. After each scroll break, I wanted to feel rejuvenated and ready to take back on the world. I wanted girl power content, I wanted spiritual content, astrology out the ass content… I followed accounts like The Female Hustlers, Black Female Therapists, Oh That Witch Again, and Taurus Scopez.

With Facebook, I felt a bit more conflicted on how to cleanse as I’m not typically one to randomly delete people – which is the standard way to cleanse these days. I generally feel that deleting people isn’t really erasing the problem, and I also think it’s important to try to put yourself in other’s shoes whenever possible. So by not deleting people, I get to do this, attempt to somehow see the world through their eyes – what they come across on their timeline, decidedly resonate with, and then go as far as to share onto their own platform… it says a lot about them. What one shares on social media is very telling about how they are as a person.

FYI this is me lowkey admitting that I psychoanalyze what most everyone posts 😉

Ultimately, my Facebook solution was to actively go through and make sure I was following, like actively going to profiles and hitting the follow button, those friends who have a good rep in terms of posting a wide range of content. My second solution was to find private groups to join. My top favorite groups that keep my Facebook feed filled with Grade A quality content are The Solo Female Traveler Network and Road to 100 Countries. Both pages keep my feed adequately filled with people’s personal travel stories, their tips, and overall inspo to get out, travel, face any fears and knock down any barriers.

So as wild as social media is, I think we must face that it’s something you can’t really ignore or pretend doesn’t matter in this day and age. You just can’t. So, take this frenemy by the horns and own it – make it what you want, because while you can’t ignore it, you can certainly tell it what to do.

. . .

Side note – with a post about social media I feel I should throw in that I hope you’re following PKC on Instagram & Facebook 🙂

Emily SmithLeave a comment