Hello Asheville!
How the fuck you doin’ today? What? Why the sad face? Oh that? Sorry. Jeeze, I didn’t mean to offend. The “eff word” comes out of my mouth almost as frequently as other people exhale. What can I say? I like to let the expletives fly. To me, it’s just a way to add a little extra umph to whatever I’m sayin’. You may have also noticed that I am a frequent user (some might say abuser) of bold, italics, and even the occasional ALL CAPS! Every once in a great while, I might even go COMPLETELY CRAZY and use all three. I think it’s safe to say that I am a big fan of emphasis, and employing swear words is just one of the tools that we, as human beings who communicate through language, can use to express a little extra motherfucking emphasis. Knowmsayin’?
Along with emphasis… marijuana and chicken pot pie… I am also a huge fan of FaceBook! I’m on there all day, every day, and I love it so much, that when I realized it was sucking time away from my job, I figured out a way to make it part of my job. To me, FaceBook is fucking brilliant for many reason, including these:
• I’m in touch with old friends from my three former “home-towns:” Chicago, Boston, and even little ol’ Westboro, Massachusetts, where I grew up and went to high school.
My friends from Boston are thee driest, most dead-pan, hilarious, mutherfuckers you’ll ever meet.
• I get to keep ahead, afoot, and abreast of what all my busy-as-fuck / oh-so-creative / shittin’-out-kids / livin’ the life friends are doing at all times.
My friend Jill is one of the funniest people ever, and even more addicted to FaceBook than I am, shamelessly chronicling her every thought and moment on this Earth.
• And perhaps best of all for a content generating machine like me is that I get to express myself daily, to a rather wide audience of people that include my friends, family, colleagues, clientele, and even complete strangers, and rarely do I feel the yoke of censorship around my neck… rarely.
The other day, I woke up all excited to promote things through my Stu Helm: Food Fan FaceBook page! YAY! I mainly wanted to push the link to the latest episode of the AVL Food Fans podcast that I do with Chef Joe Scully. I wanted to see how many new “listens” I could generate in one day, and I didn’t care what I had to do to get them. When I want immediate gratification via the internet in the form of clicks, likes, reach, and listens, I’ll do just about anything… I’ve even been known to pay for it.
On FaceBook they call it “Boosting.”
So I crafted a post, the way I do, and tried to get Zuckerberg to “boost” it for me. I gave him five dollah to make it hollah. Here’s what I wrote…
“It’s Saturday Morning, Yo! The perfect time to… catch-up on back episodes of AVL Food Fans!!! With interesting guests, ranging from farmers, to millers, to servers, cooks, coffee roasters and brewers, food writers and event promoters, there’s always lots of useful info to be heard! Plus my co-host Chef Joe Scully is always saying the funniest shit ever, and has awesome insights on running a restaurant / catering service. For my part, I mostly laugh at Joe, struggle to find my place in the script, and mispronounce things. We hope that our show is informative and amusing. Please listen and let us know what you think! http://www.spreaker.com/show/avl-food-fans Thanks to Chestnut, Corner Kitchen Catering, The Corner Kitchen, Blue Dream Curry House, Aloft Asheville Downtown, ZaPow Studios, WPVM 103.7 The Voice, and everyone else who has supported AVL Food Fans at any time in our 11 episode history! You guys rule.”
All good, right? Fun. Upbeat. Informative. Providing links to stuff that my fellow food fans are actually interested in. Decidedly not SPAM in my opinion, especially since FaceBook is notorious for whittling down your “reach” to only those people who repeatedly prove that they are interested in your posts by clicking on them and such. All fucking good. Or so I thought…
Whathehuh?!? “Not Boosted?” Not Boosted?!? What the fuck not boosted? Why the fuck not boosted? Why the fuckin’ fuck wasn’t my fuckin’ post boo… Oh wait. Oh jeeze. Did I accidentally use the word “shit,” as in “Chef Joe Scully is always saying the funniest shit ever,” and were the FaceBook algorithms offended by that? Yes I did. Yes they were.
Dangnabbittysnagdabbit! This had happened to me a few times already, and I was getting more than slightly annoyed.
I didn’t know I couldn’t swear! I used the term “cuter than fuck” once and found out quickly that it’s tantamount to hate speech. My post was “not boosted.”
Vulgar language hasn’t been my only crime. One time my post was rejected for a’boostin’ because it contained an image that had too many words on it. ._. It was a poster fer fucks sake. For an event. Y’know, the kind of thing you might want to, oh, I dunno, PROMOTE!!! Another time a post was rejected because it contained an image that “includes nonexistent functionality such as a play button that suggests video capability.” I couldn’t… what?
When I get frustrated with the FaceBook Page algorithm, I often turn to my FaceBook Profile friends for sympathy. They know and love me for the chronic complainer and foul-mouthed dirtbag that I am.
When my “funniest shit” post was denied boostage, I turned to my friends once again to vent my spleen… like I do…
Oh my fucking GAWWWD!!! Every fucking time I try to fucking boost a post on FaceBook, it gets rejected for one stupid fucking reason or another. Once again, this time, I guess because I used the word “SHIT” it’s been deemed too offensive to boost. Are we in fucking kindergarten? I mean, don’t you have to be 18 to be on FaceBook in the first place?!? I guess from now on I’ll use words like “poo-poo” and “pee-pee” and “ka-ka” and “doo-doo.” Holy fuck, I hate shit like this. Swear words are a legitimate part of human expression and have been since the fucking birth of language. Anyone who is truly offended by the word “shit,” please get the fuck off of the internet right now.
Sharing my FB Page posts on my FB Profile is also one of my savvy ploys to get the reach that the cruel and prudish algorithm seeks to deny me. Whenever I share my own posts, the reach goes up up up, so, y’know… nanner-nanner-boo-boo Zukerberg!
One of my friends did comment “I think you only have to be 13 to be on Facebook,” but whatever. I think if the kids wanna sit at the adult table, they should be mentally and emotionally prepared to hear a four letter word or two… or ten or twenty. I mean, It’s not gonna fuckin’ kill ’em, right? My dad swore a blue streak around us kids, and look at me, I turned out just fine! Well, okay, I’m a fuckin’ mess, but my sister is awesome, and she heard aaallllll the same swear words I did.
Anyhoo, I still love you FaceBook! And you too, Swear Words! I guess I’ll just have to learn the rules of boosting one at a time… as I break them.
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Stu Helm is an artist, writer, and podcaster living in Asheville, NC, and a frequent diner at local restaurants, cafes, food trucks, and the like. His tastes run from hot dogs and mac ‘n’ cheese, to haute cuisine, and his opinions are based on a lifetime of eating out. He began writing about food strictly to amuse his friends on Facebook.
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External links:
wpvmfm.org/show/asheville-food-fan
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Stu Helm: Food Fan 
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