White House sources have revealed that Barack Obama is rumored to be about to enforce the most controversial bit of legislation during his tenure as President and ban the use of Facebook in the United States.
If true, such a bombshell would ensure Obama would go down in history as the first world leader in the western world who stood up to the vacuous horror of social media.
With billions of users worldwide, it was once estimated that if every member of Facebook were to belong to one country, then it would probably be the biggest in the world.
How lovely! Imagine for a minute, if you dare, the mind-numbing horror and brute banality of an island inhabited with nothing but Facebook users.
The hellish reality of hordes of strangers, all desperately vying for attention and “poking” one another senseless in a bid to have the coolest friends, funkiest status, wackiest profile picture, and most up-to-date baby scan picture, would be enough to make Satan himself turn his big red scaly back and say, “That’s enough!”
Left to their own devices, and without the condemnation of more civilized and refined souls to restrain their base arguments and pointless pontifications, these egotistical and squabbling little beasts would make Lord of the Flies seem like a Walt Disney film quicker than you can say “I’m a real person get me outta here.”
Thankfully, and it’s been a long time coming, more and more people are cottoning to the fact that Facebook is not a place to share; it’s a place to shun.
And if sources are to be believed, then Barack Obama is one such person who is willing to stand up to the endless cat videos and selfies.
White House insider Paige Three claims, “Mr President believes social media to be a plague and a pestilence on America, and he has had enough. He’s determined to bow out with a bang and do one last good deed before he steps down, and that is to ban every man, woman, and child in America from ever using Facebook again.”
Of course, it will be a true test of character for Obama if he is determined for America to truly swim against the tide and avoid Facebook like the plague.
For a long time now, the social media giant has slowly and stealthily attempted to posses the world’s soul and turn us all into driveling cyber people consumed by envy and obsessed with spying on people we have never met.
During the social network wars, how many of us weary “survivors” have looked on with regret and a contemptuous shake of the head as both family and friends were infected by the deadly virus and fell like dominos in the face of the overwhelming peer pressure to “get connected.”
As Mark Zuckerberg’s evil cackle echoed endlessly around the internet, people without a Facebook account were viewed with suspicion by the millions who were enjoying all the benefits of having an intimate and loving relationship with a computer program.
Even by their nearest and dearest, non-users were considered untrustworthy deviants who had no friends and had nothing to say. “Why aren’t you on Facebook?” users would snarl in complete disbelief sprinkled liberally with just the slightest hint of moral outrage.
The “possessed,” as non-users like to call them, soon began to lose all sense of human dignity. Core values such as personal privacy, modesty, and a healthy distrust of strangers were thrown out of the window as a bloody and merciless battle to be the most popular, witty, and liked prevailed.
Alongside Obama, the rest of us watched on with unspeakable sorrow as the afflicted became annoyingly self-centered and obsessed with sharing updates of their life with an uncaring world.
If you didn’t play the game and join their gang, your were soon considered something of a pitiful leper as millions of Facebook users reverted to the archetype of the playground bully and seemed to adopt the stance of, “If you’re not with us, you’re against us.”
Amongst the ranks of the “possessed,” however, there was no social harmony or cyber utopia to be found. Smear campaigns were commonplace, and much discord and strife that was sown on Facebook spilled over into the real world, with disastrous consequences.
The social network had in many ways started to resemble a particularly vile episode of The Jerry Springer Show without any advert breaks.
Many of us survivors tried to help those caught in the throes of this terrible addiction with rational arguments along the lines of “If I want to speak to a friend, I pay them a visit or pick up the phone,” and “If I want to share photos, I use email, not stick them up in the internet’s equivalent of a pub toilet.”
Sadly, our pleas for liberation fell on deaf ears, because people who lived in small British villages wanted to have long distance relationships with their “friends” in San Francisco, and the daily dose of gossip and vicarious existence which Facebook provided was too good to give up on.
The stark truth of the matter was that people had hundreds of friends but no one with whom to pass the long and unforgiving hours of an actual day with.
And then, from out of the darkness, there comes hope — much like a beautifully crafted letter from another era – with Barack Obama perhaps leading the way
In the words of Obama, “Can we do it?” “Yes we can.” Let’s create some real change we can be proud of.
America’s collective recovery from the addiction to Facebook will no doubt take time, and some may relapse, but as they emerge from their cyber holes like prisoners who have been kept in solitary confinement for an inhumanly long time, they will finally see the light that Obama might just spread through every corner of the civilized world.
And for those of you who are still possessed, you are not alone; America will pray for you.
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