The Origin Story - Part 2

This is a continuation of my very first post. For those of you who have just joined me, I recommend that you go back to my first post (The Origin Story - Part 1) in order to gain some context regarding this blog and this entry.

Where we last left off, I had hinted at (understatement) my anger at facebook's policies. I would like to temper that a little to make clear that I do not actually hate facebook. Instead, I would consider myself being in a love/hate relationship with it. In order for you to more fully understand this, I would like to take you back to the beginning again. The story continues thus...

When I first waded into the seemingly inviting waters of facebook groups, I had had relatively minor exposure to social media in general and facebook in particular. I had recently opened an account in order to keep in contact with my students, but more specifically to reduce the amount of waste created by my assignments to my students. Due to these assignments and my dislike for social media in general, I had amassed an embarrassing amount of industrial waste in the form of used CDs and DVDs in my desk drawer. As an advocate for a green lifestyle, I was truly ashamed and forced myself to reconsider my position regarding social media. I would have to learn to put up with the never-ending posts regarding peoples' pets and hobbies, bite the bullet, and face the music.

At first, it worked like a charm. This is the positive side of facebook. It was likely created for just this purpose: teachers keeping up with their students and offering a digital platform for the exchange of lessons and assignments. I was able to save the Earth from a massive amount of plastic waste and keep in touch with my students at the same time. I began to form groups for all of my classes and signed up all of my students as my friends so that they could message me in an emergency. At that time, I used my title before my name as my profile name: Ajarn Robert Eastland, which roughly translates to 'teacher at a university', then my name. So far, so good...

...Then came the dark side...In my first foray into groups outside of my own making, I wanted to share the first Thai English tutorial that my wife and I made for the students in our university that needed help passing their English exit exam. I ventured into a group of strangers who happened to be English teachers in the same country as me, offered my background story, and shared the link to our video. In doing so, I aroused the ire of an elementary school teacher who impatiently jumped on our video in order to profess his unending wisdom and knowledge regarding teaching philosophy. He bitterly complained about the use of Thai in our video and the proficiency level of the questions, all the while crowing about how his grade school students could easily answer any of those questions and that we were quite ridiculous for using Thai to teach English. I calmly explained to him through the comment section of my post that Thailand is full of university students who cannot answer that level of  question, that they cannot understand English instruction regarding these questions, and finally that this video was not intended for any other viewers. 

I must admit that the rest of my story regarding this young fellow is heavily based on my assumptions to which you may or may not agree. I believe that he fumed at being reasonably corrected, got a buddy to agree with his point of view, and jumped onto my YouTube channel with his buddy to flame our video. He and his buddy posted negative comments based on the very same argument I had already refuted in the facebook post. I replied to him once again on the YouTube comments, again publicly pointing out the error of his own assumptions and telling his friend that he was also making erroneous assumptions regarding the level of proficiency of Thais in general and the method used to teach them. I also added that I agreed with them regarding not using the native language to teach higher level learners. All handled, right?

Immediately following these exchanges, which all happened within about 24 hours, I was blocked from using my facebook account. I was faced with the message that someone (Gee, I wonder who?) had complained about my user name and that I would have to prove that my legal name included the word Ajarn in it in order to access my account. WHAAAAA......????

Think about that for a moment. Facebook has given complete strangers more power over your account than you have unless your name exactly matches your legal documents. How many of you can say that is true? I know literally thousands of people who do not use their legal name on their facebook account. Every single one of them, and you as well if you are not using your real name, are at the mercy of any insecure person with a grudge against you! How is that for an unfair policy?

Again I surmise here, but I think that my sparring partner knew well that my title meant 'university teacher' and that he felt insecure about his own life and job as a primary school teacher. He could not live with being publicly 'schooled' by me and had to try to stab me in the back in any way he could. So, my final question for this post, my dear readers, who provided him with the knife?