A funny thing happened at one of my jobs (yes, I have a few jobs. I currently work for three different colleges and universities and soon there is to be a four job, but I will not name the offending censoring party under discussion here) where some individuals abandoned their beer cans in a study-room and I posted these photos (see below) yesterday to Twitter with a few funny comments (I am sometimes really, really funny). You would think that the individuals drinking in a non-alcohol area would at least recycle the evidence, but apparently not. It was a very funny occurrence and everyone was laughing. I also sent the photos to some friends and family who thought the photos were hysterical. Then today I received a slightly hostile email from my supervisor that basically said someone up the food chain was offended, that it reflected badly on my place of employment (so beer cans and not the 101 other things that gets the employer on TV are now seen as reflecting badly. Really?), that people might think the employees were drinking (Really? Really?), and that I was to immediately delete out these photos.
So lets review the facts:
What were the Tweets of? They were photos of empty beer cans and a skeleton.
Did I specifically mention, in the beer can Tweets, my employer by name? No.
Did they show any humans (as in humans with the beer cans) in my place of employment? No.
Where they linked to my place of employment’s website or social media sites? No.
Where they posted in connection to any persons that work at my place of employment? No.
Did they name the individuals who left the offending beer cans? No.
Where were they posted? They were posted on my personal Twitter and Facebook pages and on Facebook you need to be my ‘friend’ to see the comments.
So basically someone at my place of employment looked at their personal social media (Twitter and/or Facebook) and saw empty beer cans and empty beer cans with a skeleton on my own personal social media (Twitter and/or Facebook) and did not like it, and decided to censor and stifle my creative and artistic freedom of speech.
Censorship she cried!
Censorship, I never thought it could happen to me.
As you can imagine, especially if you know me, I do not take kindly to be censored. So I sent the slightly hostile email from the supervisor out to a few people to see if others found it as odd and crazy as I did. The general consensus was: kind of weird, slightly insane, did I work for anti-beer people, and oh yes, definitely censorship.
Censorship, I never thought it could happen to me.
A few people I know suggested that I contact my union, file a complaint with HR, contact the ACLU or the American Library Association (ALA) (who has a whole page on censorship and control and censorship of the Internet http://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/censorshipfirstamendmentissues/censorshipinternet). All I know is that apparently some places of higher education only give lip-service to ideas of freedom of speech and if they don’t like something they destroy it.
I have now passed through various phases of disbelief, anger, hostility, and crankiness, to finding the whole thing rather odd, weird, and now kind of funny in a ‘I’m going to be pissed off about it for sometime, but I have started to make jokes about it phase’ (humor tends to be my final stage). Now I have my own censorship story to share around the campfire and if you ever see me in real life and ask nicely, I will tell you who the offending censoring parties under discussion where and I will be more than happy to name names.
So in the end I caved to censorship. I know. I know. I am sorry for deleting the posts ACLU and ALA, and I am sorry to all of you out there who are fighting the good fight against the tyranny of censorship in all its evil forms. I delete the two beer Tweets from my social media sites (Twitter and Facebook) and then I promptly deleted and unfriended those that I work with, so they will no longer be offended by anything I post. However, I have posted the two offending censored photos here for you dear reader. They are presented to you in all their shiny technicolor beer can glory, as if to say: “We will not go quietly into the night!” We will not vanish without a fight! We’re going to live on! We’re going to survive!” (yes a bit melodramatic, but there you go: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116629/quotes).
