I was officially banned from a Facebook page today – and called a troll!
Both were firsts for me.
The silly thing is, I agreed with the story on the page and many sentiments expressed in comments, but its followers misunderstood what I posted.
Suddenly, I offended everyone due to a careless, unintentional oversight I didn’t even consider until it was too late.
An overzealous, emotional group misunderstood what I was trying to say and saw me as their enemy. The page admin stepped in, called me a troll, and I was banned without a chance to explain myself.
I saw enough reactions to I understand how my comment went completely off track; all because of one word.
Did I say I agreed with the story and the general sentiments of the page’s community?
The article was about the Colorado Springs shooting at a Planned Parenthood location which left two civilians and a police officer dead. Nine others were injured, including a personal friend’s husband.
The article pointed out unnerving examples of support on social media from extreme ‘pro-life’ Christians praising the shooter, saying the victims deserved to be shot – a disgusting sentiment.
Let me be clear. I don’t agree with that.
Anyone who knows me, reading this right now, is thinking to themselves, “What the hell?”
I stepped on a social media mine.
The point I was trying to make was the hypocrisy of people who aren’t outraged by the shooting in Colorado are the same people who were outraged when the graphic appeared of Sarah Palin in rifle crosshairs, except Palin wasn’t shot.
Simple, right? Not really.
I didn’t end my statement saying Palin wasn’t shot. I said nobody was shot because that particular graphic didn’t lead to anyone being shot.
However, there was a crosshairs graphic that did; a graphic that surfaced before the one I was talking about.
What I didn’t address (and certainly wasn’t referring to) was a separate, but related, earlier graphic produced by Sarah Palin’s Political Action Committee (SarahPAC) containing a picture of House Representative Gabrielle Giffords in crosshairs who, subsequently, survived an assassination attempt when she was shot in the head on January 8, 2011.
The followers of this site thought I was referring to SarahPAC’s graphic and intentionally being an internet troll, stoking emotion because, you know, I have nothing better to do.
Yeah, no. Those people are out there, but I’m not one of them. It makes me sick to think anyone thought that was my intent.
The intricacies of the issues affecting us today are deep, and emotions are running higher than ever, no matter what side you take.
Mistake or not, once a group bands together, only perception matters.
My mistakes were pointing out hypocrisy only referencing one easily confused detail of a much larger incident, and forgetting how easily I could be misunderstood. Oops.
Communicating with strangers through social media, even ones with whom you agree, is risky business, and it’s easy to stumble.
The specific page isn’t important. I submitted an apology through the group’s main website and explained the mix-up, but I haven’t heard from them. The admin was much more quick earlier today.
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