I was nearly put into Facebook jail a couple of days back. For using hate speech.
I called someone a sweet potato.
This is true: my sister is a fan of those weird little games on Facebook. You know, the ones where you click “play here” and it quickly scans your site (or so it claims) and your Facebook picture (which for Karen, as often is not, is some random water bird). “What would you look like if you were a man (or woman)?” “What kind of a dog would you be?” “What will you get for Christmas this year?”
The last one she did was “What’s your tattoo for 2021?” Mine would probably be, “Hey! I never told you could do that! Get that needle away from me!” But hers came out as a skull floating over a bed of flowers – which I guess is a girl goth thing – and the vaguely threatening motto, “I am who I am, your Approval isn’t needed.”
In her comments she added that Popeye phrase we all know so well, “I Yam What I Yam.”
And so I replied, “Spoken like a true sweet potato.”
Okay, okay, that isn’t exactly a classic response. But it’s just Facebook, so what do you want?
Anyway, I had barely tapped in the words when a box appeared that warned me, “Your comment may go against our community standards. It looks similar to others that we removed for bullying or harassment.”
I must admit I’ve never been called a sweet potato – or a mashed potato, a scalloped potato or even a baked potato in my lifetime, though there have probably been a few who would have called me a half-baked potato if they had thought of it. I wanted to have eyes on this whole situation so I began to dig around the internet.
According to Reddit (and who doesn’t believe Reddit?), it is indeed an insult to be called a potato – “but calling someone a sweet potato in endearing.”
Then there is upjoke.com, a site that has a whole listing of potato jokes. True, a potato joke is a little off subject here, but who doesn’t enjoy a good potato joke…?
“I couldn’t find the thingy that peels potatoes and carrots, so I asked my kids if they’d seen it. They told me she left me two days ago.”
“And finally for all you dads out there, “Why is Mrs. Potato Head so upset? It’s because Mr. Potato Head won’t tater anywhere.”
The Urban Dictionary doesn’t say anything particular about the secular potato but it sings more poetically about the holy one.
“The Holy Potato is made up of three minor potatoes,” we are told: the baked potato, which represents willpower, the sweet potato which is the master of wisdom and the unchanged potato which represents knowledge – except for the knowledge to know, of course, just what an “unchanged” potato is. Is it a baby potato that has pooed its diaper? And if so, what did it poo it with? And that brings us back to the mashed potato. With gravy, of course.
And so, having searched one of the two sources of all knowledge (I did not search the other one, for any good Baptist can tell you the word potato does not appear even once in the Bible) we come to the basic conclusion that, while being called a potato in its purest form (especially a half-baked one) can rightfully make the blood boil, Facebook’s suggestion that I was insulting my sister by calling her a sweet version of the spud is ridiculous. I left my comment as was and dared them to change it.
Father all, being called a sweet potato is both endearing and suggests you are a master of wisdom.
But Facebook's CEO Mark. Zuckerburg can rest easy, for he can be sure I’ll never use a phrase like that on him.
Contact Bill at 252-220-4977 or bill.hand@newbernsj.com.
December 04, 2020 at 05:13PM
https://ift.tt/3g91Ivz
Of sweet potatoes and Facebook jail - New Bern Sun Journal
https://ift.tt/2rh4zOj
Potato
No comments:
Post a Comment