David McElroy

When I checked Facebook Thursday morning, a huge, ugly warning had taken over the screen on the app. Thinking it could be glitch, I tried it on a web browser on my MacBook, but I got the same bizarre warning.

Facebook had blocked me from using my personal account — posting, commenting or taking any other actions — for the next three days. Why? The shocking explanation was that I had allegedly been posting content related to “child sexual exploitation.”

I was shocked and angry at such an ugly accusation.

The warning said that the content had been removed, but it would not tell me what the offending content might have been. I could ask for a review of the decision, but it said the review would take something like four or five days. When I pressed the appeal anyway, I found that it was useless, because it wanted me to explain why my offending post didn’t violate Facebook’s rules — even though it wouldn’t tell me what the offending post was.

My Facebook profile is public, so anybody can see what I post. Most of what I post consists of cat and dog photos. I make observations about things I see in the world. I post a few ridiculous jokes. But I’ve never posted anything even vaguely sexual, much less anything related to “child sexual exploitation.”

But because of an automated moderation system that apparently has the intelligence of a rather idiotic earthworm, I finally experienced what friends of mine have experienced before. I’m in “Facebook jail.”

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This is a story that I didn’t talk about for years, because I’m a rational person who’s never been inclined to believe in anything so inexplicably supernatural. Anything that happened had to have a natural explanation — or so I thought until I lived in this house.

I wrote a slightly longer version of this story here about 10 years ago, but I still don’t understand what happened. I thought it was an appropriate “ghost story” for Halloween — since it really happened to me.

By the way, there were a couple of flies buzzing around while I was recording this, so if you think you see or hear something with wings during this video, I can assure you that you’re not imagining that.

You can find the video on YouTube or you can watch the embedded version below.

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(Note: You will find a video version of this article here.)

I grew up completely ignorant about art.

I knew art existed, of course. I knew that someone painted the pretty pictures that we stuck on our walls as decorations. I even knew there were “serious” artists out there who created work that they claimed had meaning. I thought they were just pretentious charlatans.

Musical artists? They were just making commercial entertainment. Filmmakers and actors? They were just entertainers, too. And as for sculptors, I didn’t quite understand why anybody would care. It was just more decoration for those with money to waste.

The home and subculture in which I grew up was aggressively steeped in pragmatism and logic, not in meaning and mystical connections to the human spirit. At different times, I wanted to be an engineer, a lawyer and a businessman. Everything was pragmatic. Even my understanding of my Christian faith was firmly rooted in overly rational systematic theology, not in spiritual experience.

It’s taken decades, but art has slowly changed who I am. This spectacular 1936 painting by René Magritte, above, which is called “Clairvoyance,” represents my current understanding of art.

In this painting, Magritte brilliantly expressed the bold notion that a good artist shows us where we’re going before the rest of us can see it.

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