I was reading some Newsweek article about Evangelicals doing something appallingly hypocritical and wanted to comment with my favorite quote by Nietzsche: “Christianity died on the cross.” But the only way to do it was using my Facebook ID, which I’ve never used for commenting before but figured what the hell and typed it in. Just as I was going to hit “send” I got this weird feeling so I sort of hover there for a second but then I think “Hey, what’s the worst that can happen?” and send it. Of course “What’s the worst that can happen?” was supposed to be a rhetorical question but I guess someone or something out there was listening and must’ve taken it literally because pretty soon after that everything starts going to hell.
Immediately some guy named Sam replies all pissed off, calling me a phony and saying I’m a coward for using a fake name, and granted “Scarlet P. Freewayblogger” does sound kind of fake - which it is - I get so many threats from right wing assholes I’d be an idiot to use my real name. Then a minute or two later the guy writes again saying:
“Obviously, Christianity didn't die with Jesus on the cross! Had belief in Him died when he died on the cross, you, I, and everybody else, for the last 2000 years, would never have heard of him or his ministry and message! You Lie!”
And I think “Okay dude, chill. I get it…” but feel kind of bad because he seems so pissed-off and even though I’ve been dealing with angry nut jobs on the internet for years there’s something about this one that just feels weird somehow, especially the “You Lie!” at the end. And it takes me a minute to figure it out but what was so weird about it was that the guy sounded sincere! He wasn’t trying to be snarky or clever or anything like that, it seemed like he was seriously pissed off! Like he’d never heard of anyone questioning religion before or even remotely considered the possibility. So I’m wondering who the hell is this guy? and start picturing Sam as some messed-up fundamentalist kid who’s never been outside or some heartbroken widower who just wants to die so he can see his wife again. Or he’s some guy with PTSD or driven half mad with grief because his kids got killed or something and Jesus is all he’s got left. Anyway, I feel bad thinking I’ve just hurt someone who didn’t deserve it and for forgetting there’s lots of good people out there who are Believers and people who are broken and suffering and need him which is easy to forget when the Jesus you’re used to is the one on the radio and TV who’s like the patron saint of creepy sanctimonious preachers, awful music and smarmy blowhard politicians. And while I’m still wondering whether Sam’s some kid with leukemia or some broken lonely old man I realize“Duh, it’s Facebook!” and click on his name and it turns out the guy’s just another dumpy old middle aged white guy, exactly like me.
So I click around a bit, trying to figure out what the guy’s deal is and it seems like he just your standard, garden-variety, angry right-wing asshole. He lived outside of Atlanta, hated liberals and “Social Justice Warriors” and he really hated Facebook for some reason, especially Mark Zuckerberg, calling him “Fuckerberg” most of the time. Skimming around it seems like almost half his comments are dedicated to how much he hates Facebook and Fuckerburg but I can’t find anything that says why, which I thought might’ve been interesting, but then I finally find his reasons which were, in order 1) that he had too much money, 2) that he spent too much of it in other countries and 3) that he didn’t spend enough of it in the United States.
And looking around a little more it seems like pretty much all the guy talks about is money: who had too much, who wasn’t getting enough, which groups of people were cheating or getting free rides, etc. etc. And it’s funny because even though the guy’s a total right-winger he seems more hung up on the distribution of wealth than Karl Fucking Marx. And I’m looking at his page thinking the guy’s got a truck, a computer, a place in the suburbs… he’s probably living better than 90% of the people on the planet: what the hell is his problem?
So I type out “Hey dude chill out: I’m sure your Savior’s doing fine. It’s a Nietzsche quote. Didn’t mean to upset you…” and probably should’ve just left it at that but then I can’t resist adding “I’m sure thirty years from now you’ll look back at it and laugh.” just to be snarky and hit send.
Sam didn’t write back so that should’ve been the end of it, but of course it wasn’t because twenty minutes later I’m still stuck on the guy. Maybe you know the feeling - you’re constantly subjected to this relentless stream of ridiculous shit and just get used to it but every once in awhile you hit a sort of critical mass and something you’d normally just ignore with all the rest of it triggers you, opening your eyes to the entirety of all the absurdity you’ve been going along with and taking for granted. For me, that was Sam and his Facebook page.
Here was a guy who presumably loves and believes in the divinity of Jesus but somehow hates liberals and “Social Justice Warriors…” What the hell is that about? Has metropolitan Atlanta been suffering under some unpublicized reign of terror from sociology professors, old Deadheads and Greenpeace volunteers? Are the suburbs reeling from a rash of kidnappings and violent home invasions carried out by intersectional feminist yoga instructors?
Both of us were about the same age and demographic and given the same advantages - which was practically ALL of them - and maybe I’m not dancing on rainbows all day, but I’m sure as hell not spending my precious time on this earth bitching and moaning about where Mark Zuckerberg decides to spend his money.Which reminds me that thirty years or so down the line I’m gonna be dead as a doornail while presumably he gets to live forever partying with Jesus and Grandma and all his old pets… the guy should be giggling his damn fool ass off. The only way it made any sense was that believing in an eternal afterlife of perfect bliss made this one seem just like some long dull first act he had to sit through with no real value that he could basically afford to waste. And if that was the case then there was a very good chance that Sam was quite literally making the mistake of a lifetime.
And when I decide to go back to his Facebook page it’s not like I’m even deciding: I have to go back… It’s a primal compulsion, like Sam is a car crash I have to slow down to study because some primitive part of my brain is telling me there’s something vitally important about it… that there's some crucial lesson there I need to learn.
And the first thing I notice is there’s not a single mention of God or Jesus or any of his teachings - unless you include the part about hating liberals and social justice warriors - and I can’t help thinking the guy’s got a whole lot of nerve getting all high and mighty about 2000 years of Jesus’ ministry if the only thing he sees in it is a ticket to the afterlife. And again, it’s this weird sort of raw sincerity to his resentment: there’s no pauses or reflective asides or attempts to be smart or funny or playful, apart from his use of the term “Fuckerberg,” but even that seemed utterly joyless. And then I realized what it was - the thing that had seemed so terribly wrong - it was the sheer joylessness of it, and the utter lack of any gratitude… or for that matter any sense of ever being impressed or amused, awestruck, amazed or proud… I kept looking and looking, unable to believe it, but there seemed to be literally no trace of anything whatsoever that was remotely positive. Not only was there no sign of Jesus, there was no sign of redemption or salvation at all.
I shut my laptop and shook my head, feeling sorry for the guy and the absurdity of him schooling me on spiritual matters of any sort when it was obvious I should’ve been preaching to him… I couldn’t help seeing my own life in comparison as absolutely carefree and joyous: just one long sparkling carnival of blessings and good fortune every single day of it. Closing my eyes I began flashing on random memories and images: a certain way my father would laugh, the lines on my mother’s face, favorite lovers, landscapes, rooms from my childhood and then just a succession of faces of all of people who’d stepped in and out of my life… each of them looking so beautiful… radiant… remembering practically all of them as being happy and interesting… loving and kind… And I realize how lucky I’ve been just knowing them, how much I love them, I can feel it literally start to fill me… a wave of pure emotion coming up from my center and filling my chest and then finally rising up to my face before spilling unstoppably from my eyes. And then I’m just sitting there crying uncontrollably for all the love that I felt for the people in my life.
It takes a while to come down and take stock of the situation, to start thinking again instead of just feeling. And I look at myself and consider exactly what I was doing: sitting alone in a room and crying my eyes out for no reason except feeling so lucky and blessed to know the people I knew and live the life that I led. And the more I thought about it the more it seemed like a perfectly natural reaction to an equally perfectly natural thing to do - nothing more than taking a bit of time and perspective to consider all my blessings collectively… And yet as simple as it seemed I couldn’t really remember ever having done it before. Maybe that was the lesson my subconscious knew I still needed to learn from the car-crash that was this guy’s life. Flashing back on the caricatures of haunted children and broken old men I’d first imagined he might be, it was hard not to see him as even more pitiable in a way. But he’d managed to open a door inside me that had really needed opening, so I thought “Thank you, whoever you are, you poor misguided bastard…”
But then two days later I get an e-mail from Facebook out of the blue saying they need me to confirm my identity and I thought "Fuck you, whoever you are, you goddam miserable bastard..."
Someone named Jesse said I had seven days to prove that my legal name was in fact Scarlet P. Freewayblogger or they would shut off access to my account. I was pissed off of course, and kind of amazed that a company like Facebook, with over a billion accounts, would be so quick to act against me just because some asshole in Georgia said to. So I wrote back to Jesse and politely explained that as a political activist I receive a lot of threats and have to use a pseudonym during these charged and partisan times because people like me were so often the targets of political harassment, giving as evidence the very fact I had to write this letter.
I said I knew who was behind their request and after summarizing our exchange on Newsweek, explained that while allowing the resources of their company to be utilized by a single individual purely to harass me was a bad idea to begin with, that since I was effectively being punished for expressing a religious opinion on a public forum their request constituted a direct violation of my first amendment rights.
Most of all though, I had to point out that as bad as their policy was for victims like me, the potential consequences for the accusers like Sam could easily prove to be far worse, and that by acting so quickly and transparently on their requests exposed them to retribution by victims less reasonable than myself. I said I’d gladly share my real identity with Facebook so long as they assured confidentiality, thanked him for his help and said I looked forward to hearing back from him soon.
Despite the exceptional professionalism of my letter and all of the crucial and fascinating issues it raised, after four days passed with no reply I sent another, then another, and another. Along with reiterating the issues of the first, these letters additionally explained the critical importance of my work and ability to communicate with my followers. Incredible as it may seem, none of these letters were responded to and access to my account was shut down as promised and just like that years of work and organizing instantly vanished into thin air.
My work, for those unfamiliar, is simply a method of using handmade signs strategically posted by freeways. This allows the average citizen to broadcast their political opinions to hundreds of thousands of people per day at practically no cost and is entirely protected under the first amendment. Thanks to Facebook I have thousands of followers, although admittedly only a handful who actually go out and do it. Though easy, cheap, legal and fun - as well as profoundly necessary in these dark times - people are reluctant to speak out in this manner primarily because it’s a social aberration, and as such has the stigma of being “crazy,” despite the fact it’s done with absolute anonymity. Nevertheless, since the founding fathers gave us limitless rights to political expression, including the use of public property, it makes perfect sense to use it to the fullest: nothing at all crazy about that…
Dear Jesse,
This will be the 14th letter I have written you, (apart from the two declarations/summary outlines re: formal policy changes I trust you’ve forwarded to the legal department.) Given the complexity of my proposed changes and the cumbersome nature of legal documentation in general, I naturally understand and accept there’d be some delay in turnaround from Legal, but am confused and frankly disappointed in not having heard back from you yet. (Attached please find revisions and addenda to second declaration as discussed in my previous letter.)
Looking Forward To Hearing From You Soon!
Scarlet P. Freewayblogger
Dear Jesse
cc: Facebook Legal
Apparently you have either missed or chosen to ignore my last three communications regarding the necessity for the immediate restoration of access to my account! I cannot emphasize enough the urgency of this request not only to myself and my over 4000 followers but also to the future of our nation! (Although the sensitive nature of my work prohibits its full disclosure at this time, rest assured that it very important and that the restoration of my account requires immediate attention.)
Yours With Great Urgency!
Scarlet P. Freewayblogger
Dear Newsweek Magazine,
This is just to follow up on my previous inquiries regarding the parameters of Newsweek’s shared liability with Facebook as it pertains to the hosting of their Comments application.
Very Truly Yours,
Scarlet P. Freewayblogger
cc: Supreme Court of the United States
Friedrich Nietzsche Historical Society
Dear Jesse,
I hope you are doing well. Given the importance to you and Mark (did you give him my card?) of securing ID confirmation of my account, I am resending these revisions to the 2nd draft of the outline for the proposed confidentiality agreement I sent to your Legal Dept. two weeks ago. (Not complaining, but that’s the eighth batch of documents I’ve sent to Legal now w/o reply. Ideas?)
Yours Truly,
Scarlet P. Freewayblogger
Dear Jesse,
Attached please find what I’m sure you’ll agree should be a watertight agreement between us regarding the disclosure and confidentiality of my identity. Looking forward, as I’m sure you are, to finally putting this all behind us, let me reiterate my previous suggestion that we include Sam personally when we meet up for the final resolution of this matter. (Have you heard back from him in response to my statement on the intentions behind the initial Newsweek comment? If Facebook policy requires that he officially rescind his request I can’t help thinking a simple clarification of Nietzsche’s thoughts regarding the mortality of Christ will probably do the trick!)
Yours Truly,
Scarlet P. Freewayblogger
Dear Jesse,
While I don’t wish to sound unpleasant here, I have still heard nothing from you or Facebook’s Legal Department regarding the redrawing of your Suspect Account Notification and Identity Confirmation policies. These, along with the final draft of the confidentiality agreement I sent to you last week represent literally hundreds of hours of my time at this point.
Close as we are to finally resolving these matters, I look forward to celebrating with you and Mark at your headquarters or perhaps on board the Facebook yacht, where I picture us giddily toasting our friendship and the re-opening of my Facebook account. I must remind you however, that as a man of principle I cannot do so until the existing policy guidelines have been formally replaced. I’m sure both you and Mr. Zuckerberg will agree that there is no caviar so costly as that which comes at the price of the freedom to quote Nietzsche on Newsweek comment boards, and that even the finest of champagnes would taste bitter knowing it was made not just by the trampling of grapes, but the trampling of our First Amendment rights as well.
Yours Adamantly,
Scarlet P. Freewayblogger
Dear Jesse,
Please ignore my last letter (“Dear Heartless Murdering Bastards etc. etc.”) as it was written under duress. Please understand that I would never want to hurt you or Sam… I don’t want to hurt anybody! All I’m trying to do is help you! And help Facebook!
Thank you for your Patience and Understanding,
Scarlet P. Freewayblogger (Attached please find revisions to addenda re: 3rd draft of proposed confidentiality agreement)
Dear Honorable Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States,
(Re: “Ancillary Notes to Summary Declaration, “People of the United States vs. Jesse, Facebook, Newsweek and SAM”)
My apologies for typographical error on pg. 17 line 5. Should read “onion rings”
Respectfully Yours,
Scarlet P. Freewayblogger
Dear Mr. Zuckerberg
It is with the deepest regret that I must advise you of my intention to file a FORMAL COMPLAINT with the BETTER BUSINESS BUREAU regarding your employee “Jesse” whose failure to respond to my POLITE LETTERS and REASONABLE REQUESTS may soon cost you a VALUABLE CUSTOMER!
Regretfully Yours,
Scarlet P. Freewayblogger
(P.S.: Jesse Likes SAM! He takes SAM’S SIDE! Even though SAM SAYS TERRIBLE THINGS ABOUT YOU!!!
I AM YOUR FRIEND! I DO NOT LIKE SAM!!!)
Regretfully Yours Again,
Scarlet P. Freewayblogger (NOT SAM!)
Dear Better Business Bureau, Menlo Park California,
Thank you for your kind attention regarding my treatment by Facebook employee “Jesse” as described in my letter to you yesterday. Upon subsequent review I detected a typographical error at the top of Page 3. The line that reads “DAY OF RECKONING will come for SAM FROM ATLANTA and the only angels singing will be the ANGELS OF VENGEANCE” should read instead “Thursday.”
My apologies for any misunderstanding,
Scarlet P. Freewayblogger
cc: Jesse and Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook Corp
Hi Jesse,
It’s been a long time now hasn’t it? I’m not sure, maybe just a long time for me. I guess all of this has started getting to me because I haven’t been sleeping well, or at all it seems, and that’s why I sent you all that nonsense about Jesus and Sam and heavenly choirs of vultures and worms. I just re-read it and honestly have no idea what I was thinking - let me assure you it all just sounds like crazy talk to me too.
I’m attaching the final drafts of all of the documents I made one more time. Please look at them okay? Please let me know this hasn’t all been just a waste of time.
Because it’s long after six o’clock now
and way past the time our mommies and daddies
were supposed to be taking us home to bed…
because we really are very, very tired little teddy bears.
Hi Jesse! Hi Mark!
How are you doing? Eating well? Getting enough sleep? I sure hope so! Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned lately it’s the importance of getting enough sleep. Only takes about two weeks without it and this beautiful world with all of its wonderful people… nothing but gargoyles and hellscape. But I’m better now. Much better. Once I figured out what I had to do I was able to start sleeping again… I don’t think either of you will ever know or understand just how good that feels.
When I ask how you’re feeling, I’m not just making small talk, it’s something you really should make a note of. Because how you’re feeling right now, at this very moment… this is probably about as good it’s gonna get for you for awhile I’m afraid.
You should’ve listened when I said not to shut down my account just because some asshole in Atlanta told you to. And you really should’ve listened when I said not to do it when I knew exactly which asshole it was. How many times did I tell you? How many polite e-mails did I send before I started sending crazy ones? And how much crazy shit had to pile up before you started thinking there might be some kind a problem? Now take a look at the postmark and start praying that all that crazy shit you kept ignoring doesn’t turn into Plaintiffs exhibits numbers 1 through 500. Maybe next time you’ll think twice about handing your company over like a gun to the next asshole who gets triggered by Nietzsche.
You’re going to have to take my word for this but I’m doing Sam a favor. This just wasn’t working out for him. He’s one of those people who needs to be with Jesus and I didn’t take it seriously enough when I saw it or even try to fix it so all I can do now is put him out of his misery. I’m not even mad at him, or you for that matter. I think we all know the only thing you’re really guilty of is having the bad luck of being stuck inside of somebody's head when something else inside there broke. But hey, when you’re fucking around with over a billion people you’ve got to figure something like this is bound to happen sometime.
Sleep Well,
Scarlet P. Freewayblogger
Turns out all of us are always just two weeks away from pretty much losing everything. Everything you have, everything you know, and everything you think you are… poof! Gone. After two weeks without sleep - 14 days - you just give up on everything. You give up fighting it or trying to fix it or explain it. You even give up hoping it’s gonna stop. You give up on things ever being normal again because you’ve long ago forgotten what that is. After three or four days the whole system is misfiring and lots of little things start going wrong. Which things, in what way and how badly is pretty much random, but the overall effect is essentially psychosis: hallucinations, emotional instability, morbidity and depression.
Watching everything around me becoming ugly and grotesque, every thought turning progressively morbid and seeing in every face some personification of suffering or sickness… turns out this is a fairly standard manifestation of psychosis. Likewise the way sounds would blend together and doppler in and out was a standard aural hallucination as well. But psychosis isn’t just poured into some empty vessel, it works with whatever it’s given, so when the gargoyles of old men and sickly young children all started saying “You Lie! You Lie! You Lie!” naturally I saw it as a sign. And with everything turning so nightmarish so quickly I was desperate to see somewhere within it a path to my salvation.
People usually think of emotional instability as manically going from happy to sad or ecstatic to catatonic and essentially bouncing around from one crazy idea or behavior to the next, which is probably the most popular way to go. But another way is to just latch on to one really crazy idea and really sink your teeth into it and not let go. So when the world around me started chanting “You Lie!” it all came clear to me in one perfect crystalline moment - because you see I knew I wasn’t lying - and I knew precisely what I had to do. The only way I could make things right again was to go back to where they all started going wrong - I should’ve stood up for myself and Nietzsche from the start. I’d known all along it was Sam that was wrong: it’d been shown to me practically as Divine Revelation. Sam was wasting each day of his one and only precious life waiting for a salvation that was not going to happen and I was being punished because I’d been shown this and just let it happen. So it was perfectly obvious that the only way to make the world right again was to do whatever it took to convince Sam to renounce his faith and accept the possibility that Christianity had indeed, as Nietzsche said, died upon that cross so long ago! I had to go back to the beginning and do it right this time… And this time, no matter what not to ask myself “What could go possibly wrong?”
And so my friends, Ladies and Gentlemen… imagine this: You are an honest, hard-working, God-Fearing American, enjoying the tranquility of a Sunday morning in your home in a quiet suburb of Atlanta. When you answer a knock at your door you have every right to expect that the person there who’s come to talk about Jesus would be a sweet little old lady asking you to accept Christ and His offer of Salvation into your heart. But instead you are confronted with a wild-eyed sleep-deprived maniac! Psychotically ranting about gargoyles and being haunted by children in a world gone mad, he shrieks at you about Nietzsche and babbles demonically about the mortality of Christ… Imagine yourselves Ladies and Gentlemen (of the jury…) frozen in fear as this crazed atheist madman demands that you reject salvation… that you literally renounce your faith! Feverish, sleep-deprived, his eyes burning with some hellish inner-flame he refuses to leave until finally you are left no choice but to give in…
Granted, a bit over the top, but that’s what Dave and I came up with - we were roommates in college and used to do a lot of acid so we’ve had practice coming up with crazy shit. Now he’s got a wife and two kids and a small criminal defense and personal injury practice in Alpharetta Georgia and swears there’s no such thing as over-the-top doing the whole God vs. Satan thing in front of juries down here. “It’s the whole Southern Baptist thing,” he says, “Even if you don’t have a single Baptist on the jury, which is practically impossible, that stuff’s rooted so deep it doesn’t even matter… it’s practically part of the soil. Trust me, they’re not gonna want this thing going anywhere near a courtroom down here…”
My actual first meeting with Sam was far more sedate. I was dressed casually with my hair tied back, introduced myself and let him know there were no hard feelings. I said the reason why I was there was not nearly as important as all of the reasons I shouldn’t be there - explaining just how badly Facebook had screwed up and how the two of us were looking at a once-in-a-lifetime Golden Opportunity. I told him about the paper trail of crazy I’d started and how by keeping each piece relatively low-level they’d probably never notify him of any danger - the last thing they’d do would admit any problem for which they could be held responsible. Piecemeal the letters would seem relatively harmless, but looked at in aggregate they’d be damning. Even though I was the epitome of a liberal social justice warrior, working together Sam and I got to be pretty good friends - turns out really all he needed was a girlfriend, anti-depressants and something to look forward to.
I also talked him out of his faith - for real - not just for the sake of the lawsuit. The human mind is the most amazing and complex thing we know of existing in the universe. But for all of it’s complexity and ability to touch if not quite grasp the infinite, our minds rarely if ever comprehend the most cosmically staggering concept of all, which is how incredibly fortunate we are to be here. I really do believe that giving up Jesus helped Sam take control of his life again. Once he understand his existence as having won a trillion-to-one lottery rather than as merely part of a project by some old man in the sky who got bored, he had a much better appreciation of what a gift it is to be a free and sentient being on this planet during these most amazing of times. So if you find someone who’s in pain or suffering and you really want to help them, ask them if they’ve found Jesus. And if they have, see if you can get them to consider some of the many benefits there are to losing Him.
For all it may have been worth to him personally, Sam’s loss of faith was what really gave teeth to the lawsuit. From the start I knew that insinuating myself into his life intent on revenge would make for a brilliant personal injury case, but the stumbling block was always damages. How could I hurt him in a way that would justify asking for an incredible amount of compensation that was somehow also perfectly legal? And boy, at least in that part of he country, forcing him to give up his seat at the right hand of God really fit the bill… Normally it’s hard to put a price tag on something like an eternity of bliss, but we figured 600 million dollars was probably close. Once we’d finished our depositions and Facebook understood just how screwed they were, everyone was happy to settle at a little over half of one percent.
So this turns out to be one of those stories where everyone gets what they want at the end. Sam got a healthy seven-figure check signed by Mark Zuckerberg himself, and I’m proud to say he’s in Tibet now building an orphanage, and not just a slightly-less-angry man living in a much nicer house. Dave of course got a third, and even Mark Zuckerberg probably felt like he’d come out ahead finding out that putting Sam out of his misery only meant I was taking his faith. And I got what I wanted too: Facebook changed their policies and gave me my account back, but I didn’t take it. You see, thanks to my new reputation as a raving lunatic I’m no longer an effective representative for public signposting as an occupation of the sane. Now that’s somebody else’s job, which had been my point all along. I’ve finally got an excuse to just disappear and go back to living a normal life again, and that’s why you can’t follow me on Facebook anymore.
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