Post a Comment On: ehewlett

So, it was just a form letter, eh? No response to anything I actually wrote or submitted except for a message whose text is identical to the first one I received from "Greer" - except that this one is signed instead (even more impersonally), "Facebook". Your previous reactivation of my eight-year-old "Fr. Justin Hewlett" account gave some hope to me and those following me: "Is it possible that Facebook has a human face, after all?" was one comment my blog-post received on Google+... Apparently those hopes were misplaced.

Your form-letter response also implies that you did not read or look over the messages and documents I resubmitted to you, leaving me with little hope that my case is actually being considered or heard by a human being with a sympathetic intelligence that I could reason with or appeal to. However, on the off chance that there is someone behind the curtain pushing the buttons that send off your form-letters, and still being hopeful that there must be some human beings involved somewhere in your appeal process, I respectfully resubmit the same documents I submitted before, along with the central message I am trying to get across to you:

I am, quite authentically, "Father Justin". Not "Justin" - no one calls me that, not even my parents... There are a few on Facebook (such as my parents) who know me by my legal, given name, "Edward", but my parishioners, my bishop, my seminary instructors, my fellow priests, my acquaintances whom I meet through my work in the Church - all who knows me as an Orthodox priest (which is the vast majority of the people who know me on Facebook) all refer to me as "Father Justin".

Please, Facebook, avoid the subtle form of North American cultural imperialism that would force the majority of my Facebook friends to address me online by a name they are unfamiliar with and using a level of informality they are uncomfortable with. Please accommodate my friends' Orthodox Christian culture and acknowledge "Father Justin" as the name I am known by by them in everyday life.

Sincerely yours,

Father Justin (Edward) Hewlett.


Submitted with my legal ID, official correspondence from my bishop which refers to me as "Father Justin", a picture of a picture of me in an SVS brochure in which the caption clearly refers to me as "Fr Justin Hewlett", and, last but not least, a screenshot of Greer's Facebook support message telling me that my account was reactivated which begins, "Hi Fr. Justin, Thanks for your response. We've changed your name and reactivated your account." (cited earlier in Facebook Status Update: I am... Fr. Justin!)