Flipping the bird at answers

Again with the Monty Python, but this clip illustrates the following post as well as it did the post about my flesh wound:

Brian Ward disappeared from Facebook the other day, while we were in the middle of a debate. I was surprised by this, because Brian runs a great-value blog, a lot of which is dedicated to holding other citizen journalists to account. I’m bothering to post about it because I feel like it’s necessary to return the service.

Brian posted a link to an article about the new batch of deadly drugs going around at the moment, accompanied by a comment that people deserved what they got if they took dubious drugs from a dubious dealer. I would post the exact link and comment, but of course I no longer have access to Brian’s Facebook wall.

I said the comment was inordinately harsh, that some people might not be in a position to make a better decision and should not be judged so fiercely for making a bad judgement call. Someone else got involved and the debate quickly swung away from the initial issue to focus on the morality of dealing, something I feel entirely differently about: dealing dubious drugs is morally reprehensible; consuming them is not – and is certainly not deserving of the scorn demonstrated in Brian’s dismissive comment.

It’s exactly this sort of narrow-mindedness that causes problems in drug culture: people who are ignorant of the complexities involved in the decisions surrounding drugs make generalisations that tar the whole community with the wrong brush. Drug users are not all reckless and irresponsible – many use them safely, and I consider it a shame that such users bear the brunt of the stigma that results from those who are irresponsible, and from those who shame them.

Of course, I never got as far as explaining this to Brian. When I came back to the debate and couldn’t access his page, I thought maybe an error had occurred. I added him again, but my advances were rejected. I tried again the next morning. Then and now, when I search for his name he no longer comes up in the results.

At first I thought Brian had a massive dummy spit because I didn’t agree with him¹, but as I’ve gone about drafting the post I’ve realised I should give him the benefit of the doubt, as his Facebook page appears to no longer exist. Maybe something really has gone wrong: I’ve emailed him to find out, but have not heard back.

Of course it’s entirely up to Brian whether he allows me to see his Facebook page, and the truth is that we’re not exactly ‘friends’ – we have met once, through a mutual friend. But I had assumed Brian was reading the Facebook definition of ‘friend’ rather loosely – he did, after all, either extend a friendship request to me, or accept one from me, I can’t remember which now.

Maybe I was wrong in assuming that Brian was using Facebook for reasons other than to keep in touch with friends – I have seen him chime in on debates elsewhere, so I thought it would have extended to Facebook. Plus, that he published such a provocative and opinion-laden link suggests that he uses Facebook for debate and information extending beyond his immediate friend circles.

Brian, if something really has gone wrong with Facebook and you’d like to rejoin the debate here, I would certainly welcome that.

1. from what I’ve read on his blog, he doesn’t take criticism well [↩]