The rise and fall of Ferdinand Monkey

Let me tell you a story. I’ve got this cuddly toy - let’s call him Ferdinand Monkey*.
*not his real name
Ferdinand, as his name suggests, is a monkey and I bought him on impulse, one morning when I was walking through Woolworths (remember them?) on my way to work. Someone had placed Ferdinand on the edge of a shelf so he looked like he was sitting up and he had a very friendly, engaging face. I was going through a bit of a difficult time on my life and although I’d had a brutal cull of all my cuddly toys, a few years prior to this, at that time I felt the need to get back in touch with my inner child. He was only a fiver! It may seem childish and pathetic but Ferdinand, who shall hereafter be known as Ferdy, bought me comfort, and I figured it was healthier to fixate on a cuddly toy than to eat whole cakes or drink bottles of wine.

A few years after I’d acquired Ferdy and his brother, Forbes, I joined Facebook and when I joined Facebook, Ferdy joined too, he had his own profile.

Ferdy proved very popular - he had far more Facebook ‘friends’ than I had; most of them fellow cuddly toys. It was all a bit of silly but harmless fun and I enjoyed his interactions with the other toys - or ‘faux furries’ as members of the group called themselves. There were oscar ceremonies and parties - someone created a picture of Ferdy in a tuxedo, escorting another ‘faux furry’ down the red carpet. A bit childish, you might think, but all very friendly and somewhat imaginative.

The thing about Ferdy was that he embodied everything I wanted to be - he was a Zen Buddhist and yoga practitioner; he was peace-loving, amiable and way more chilled than I could ever hope to be. He only ever said positive (albeit somewhat surreal) things. When I was getting a bit stressed about something one day, my husband turned to me and said ‘What would Ferdy do?’ In the same way that someone might ask - ‘What would the Buddha do?’ My husband used to get a bit disturbed by my Ferdy fixation, even saying ‘Who will rid me of this troublesome monkey?’ When I’d taken Ferdy on a mini break with us. But on the whole he didn’t cause any problems (Ferdy, not my husband).
Yes, I had fun with Ferdy and the rest of the faux furries, then one day, without warning - Facebook deleted his profile. They said he breached their community standards by not being a real person or something and I thought  - WTAF?!? Because, ever since I joined Facebook, I saw racist or xenophobic memes that other people had posted, shared or liked (I did report a couple of them) and still see them now. Yeah, yeah  - freedom of speech and all that but stuff that would make me feel physically sick; angry, bile-filled vitriol was allowed to fly but not my fantasy profile, my peace-loving monkey avatar. And I’m reminded of that now, when I try to share my blog on Facebook; which I’ve been doing for four years, and I write a fairly innocuous piece about me trying to give up sugar and Facebook removes it because it thinks it is spam!! Yes - Face-Cambridge Analytica scandal - book thinks that my blog breeches community standards! And yet - still with the racist memes, Facebook!

I’m going to try and post this now - let’s see if it gets deleted…..