Apologies for the rant, but I need this out of my system ...
Today, I found out that one of my sister's friends decided it was a good idea to completely destroy somebody's life over a Facebook status.
This status was not particularly offensive to any one person, nor was any one person named. In fact, it was a status made in pretty good humour and a generalised statement not meant to cause offence. However, this friend of my sister has decided that the status was meant as an insult to her, made a screen capture of it and showed it to the manager in order to get this somebody fired.
Allow me to flesh out the story a little more: we'll call our protagonist 'Sophie'. Sophie has a baby, whom she loves dearly. She also has Facebook, and through this medium she keeps all her Facebook 'friends' up to date on a regular basis about each of her child's developments. Sophie also attends a gym, wherein there is a crèche where nursery nurse (I'll make up a name for her, too:) Natalie works. She got on quite well with Natalie, we shall presume, since they eventually wound up being friends on Facebook.
A few weeks down the line, and Natalie posts a status within which she makes a joke about how annoying it is that some parents update their statuses every few minutes with details about how their babies can breathe, blink, smile, eat and sleep.
Obviously, this joke is so completely and utterly offensive, somebody has to have their lives messed up because of it. See how it victimises, condemns and viciously hurts … erm … well … no one. I mean, nobody is even named in it. It's an open joke, that any of us who know new parents who continually update their Facebook statuses with every tiny little change would understand.
But Sophie doesn't see the funny side. She clearly knows she updates her status and fills other peoples feeds with every detail of her baby's life perhaps a little too often - and how dare anybody mention it?
So Natalie must be sacked.
Over a Facebook status.
And I think, well: even if the joke had been directed at Sophie personally, or had been vicious, or had even named anybody, does it really deserve the loss of employment - of livelihood? And how many parents would Natalie, who works in a crèche, have as friends on her Facebook? How many found it funny, and how many decided she was no longer fit to have her job? And if she does get sacked, when Natalie tries to find another place of work and her prospective employer asks, 'And why did you leave your previous post?', what is she supposed to say?
“Oh, I made a not-particularly-offensive joke on Facebook about nobody specifically; one paranoid person decided it was an attack upon them and had me fired.”
So, then, what are the consequences of it being a fair long while before Natalie can find work? She can't pay her mortgage, or her rent, because of a light joke she made on Facebook? Does Natalie have children of her own that need feeding and clothing and a home? In this economic climate, it's not difficult to assume finding employment as a nursery nurse will be hard, particularly in a such a poor town as Rochdale where most people can't afford third party care for their children.
But enough about Natalie's future - or lack of one: what about Sophie? Well, everybody will know what Sophie did. She'll be the woman that had a nursery nurse fired over a Facebook status. Perhaps she did not consider when she decided to do what she did how she would later be perceived; how this whole débâcle would reflect worse on her than it would on Natalie.
At the very most, this whole thing required a simple case of 'ignore and continue as before'. The terms of Natalie's employment should not even come into it - it was a personal matter, if it was a matter at all. Maybe Sophie could have left a comment saying 'I don't like your attitude', or 'I don't like what you're trying to say'. Maybe even a personal message that only the two of them would have been able to see.
But no, Sophie decided to take Natalie's life into her own hands, and I find it utterly pathetic.
Though, as an outside observer, I would no doubt get an upturned nose and be told that it's none of my business, but no matter: if Sophie wants to destroy somebody else's life because she can't take a joke, then on her head be it.
Here's to hoping she has plenty of Horlicks to help her sleep soundly at night, and here's to hoping she might one day evolve a sense of humility, if not a sense of humour.