We live in an era where social media has the power to make a story heard. When this happens, we say that a story or post went viral. This makes for very good headlines. In the past, headlines were only possible with newspapers. It was more controlled, but it did not show the two sides of the story clearly. At least not for many of the cases.
This can also be a terrible thing. There have been countless cases when someone posts something that is not necessarily true, and the post goes viral. The person being accused of in the post suddenly finds his or herself with a lot of haters. That is the power of popularity, and that’s what it can do. For people being wrongfully accused of something, restoring their image is almost impossible.
Because Facebook is merely a broadcasting medium, no one really checks if something is true. It is just broadcasted. There are people who say that there should be some sort of agency that regulates what you can post on Facebook. Others say that having the Government regulating anything on the Internet is just a bad idea. What makes the Internet so great is also its greatest flaw. The power of free speech. If we lived in a world where everyone was honest… Well, that doesn’t exist really, so we might as well skip that part.
The good thing about Facebook is that it lets the “little guy” tell his story and be heard. And this is exactly what happened with former bus driver Johnny Cook from Georgia. Johnny likes to train his horses when he is not riding a bus. Recently he’s been doing a whole lot more training because he was fired from the school he used to work at. The reason: A Facebook post.
One day, Johnny is driving his bus when one of the students complains to him about being hungry. He asks the boy why he has not eaten and the boy’s answer makes Johnny mad. It is because the boy does not have 40 cents to pay for the school lunch. Johnny feels saddened that we live in a world where a kid will be denied food for 40 cents. When he gets home, he takes the issue to Facebook. He pleads to people who oversee the school’s lunch program.
The school’s answer is swift. They call Johnny in for a meeting and he is given an ultimatum. Either he issues a public apology to them on Facebook or he loses his job. You don’t want to miss what Johnny’s decision is and how everything unravels.
