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Why you should maybe stop being an idiot on Facebook

Written by: Erik Hagen

And now, with your permission, I would like to spend some time today offering a begrudging defense for an idiot on Facebook. If I have your permission to do so, please check this box and then continue reading this column. ☐

You may have, by now, heard of the name Lindsey Stone, and if you’re like me, you probably didn’t pay any attention to that name when you read it in your Google News feed because your brain combined the names of Lindsey Lohan and Sharon Stone into some kind of singular entity, and that combined entity, Lindsey Stone, whatever it was that it did, you did not want to know anything about it.

But it turns out that Lindsey Stone is an actual person. Specifically, Lindsey Stone is an actual person who did this action, which you are now able to view in photographic form upon your Internet device of choice. Be warned, you may become offended by the photograph which you are about to view, which I am aware of, and only barely sympathetic towards.

Gyargh! My brain is full of so much rage right now!

You’re offended, right? Of course you’re offended. That woman has a pixelated blur instead of a left hand! How dare she? But actually, that’s just a photo effect, and that photo effect is there to protect your delicate sensibilities, because that lady is flipping off that sign with her middle finger. That’s right, sign! Lindsey Stone has no need to do the things that you are telling her to do! Look at how she expresses her displeasure with obscene gestures and unfunny sight gags!

So you may be wondering how I came into possession of this photo. Did I steal Lindsey Stone’s camera? Am I inside of Lindsey Stone’s brain? No, I assure you, I have not done any of those things. Rather, Lindsey Stone was helpful enough to provide this photo for the Internet at large by posting it onto her Facebook. Because that is a thing that people do, post their stupid pictures onto Facebook and assume that people will care about them. In this case, a great many people did care, because everybody subsequently flipped their lids over the stunning amount of disrespect Lindsey Stone showed to that sign, that was just sitting there at Arlington National Cemetery, just doing its job, trying to get people to show a bare minimum of human dignity and failing quite spectacularly.

Thus, the Internet being the Internet like it is, people sprang into action and did what was expected of them to do in such a situation: Lose their cotton pickin’ minds. So a Facebook group was created, demanding that Lindsey Stone be terminated immediately from whatever it is that Lindsey Stone does for a living, and a website was created where complete strangers could post photos of Lindsey Stone along with all her personal information and her address and phone number and personal slurs and threats of outrageous violence upon her person. You know, perfectly rational reactions committed by perfectly rational human beings. This was all, as you can imagine, very upsetting for successful Internet troll Lindsey Stone, who posted the following to her Facebook in an attempt to quell the outrage she had inspired with her inability to recognize really stupid ideas before they become really stupid actions.

  • “Whoa whoa whoa… wait. This is just us, being the douchebags that we are, challenging authority in general. Much like the pic posted the night before, of me smoking right next to a no smoking sign. OBVIOUSLY we meant NO disrespect to people that serve or have served our country.”

Oh, obviously. You meant no disrespect to the military with that picture of you flipping off the sign asking you to show respect for the military. You were just being douchebags, which is a valid explanation for why you are not actually a douchebag. But as airtight an excuse as this was, it didn’t do all that much to prevent Lindsey’s workplace from terminating her and her friend who took the picture, in spite of the fact that she was described by them as being a “good employee.” Internet justice for everybody! We got that girl we don’t know fired from her job! Finally, validation for our existences!

And now, here is the part where I am forced to begrudgingly defend the actions of an idiot on Facebook. I get the outrage, I do. I, too, am offended by this picture, mostly because of how a person could possibly believe this was a “challenge to authority” and not just a desperate bid for attention. But the thing is this, she didn’t intend for me to see this picture. Or you. She didn’t post it onto the Internet under the willing intention of offending as wide a swath of the population as possible, unlike a great many other people I could name who do this every single day of their miserable lives and get to keep their jobs, mostly because that happens to be their job, pitiful though that may be.

She posted it on her Facebook under the mistaken impression that it would impress all her idiot Facebook friends. That’s it. Mission failed. That’s really the extent of the punishment she should have faced, being publicly embarrassed in front of her peers. Instead, she gets an Internet lynch mob stripping her of her privacy and successfully removing her from her livelihood while quite possibly making her unemployable for the rest of her existence. Look at the picture again. Punishment fit the crime? Seems a little excessive to me. Your results may vary.

Anyway, what’s done is done and we all don’t have Lindsey Stone to kick around any more. That person we’d never heard of before is now the person we’ll never hear about ever again, probably because she will starve on a sidewalk somewhere. Next time any of us is deliberately being an idiot, try to take a lesson away from all this and have a little moment of self-reflection. Think about what you’re doing and if it could be interpreted as an unintelligent and/or offensive action, and if so, don’t do what you are planning on doing and maybe even reevaluate your life as a whole, and then go the rest of your life successfully never doing anything stupid ever again. Become the perfect person that we are all completely incapable of being.

That, or just don’t post any photos of you being an idiot onto Facebook. That in itself would probably be an improvement.

Bismarck resident Erik Hagen is the author of the SodBlog and does his able best to be an idiot at a safe range away from all cameras, and fails most of the time. Send your embarrassing photos of Erik Hagen being an idiot along with your blackmail requests to or visit his website at SodBlog.com.

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