Good Samaritan Checks Wayfarer’s Old Tweets Before Deciding Whether To Help

“Can you imagine what would have happened to me if I’d rendered assistance without an adequate search of the guy’s Twitter, and it turned out he had liked a tweet by someone who has been insufficiently vehement in denouncing unenthusiastic participants in the Women’s March?”

Jerusalem-Jericho Road, May 2 – A traveler passing by the victim of a vicious beating and robbery withheld his assistance until he could go through the victim’s social media posting history to determine whether the man was still worthy of such assistance, or had made offensive posts that rendered him undeserving, eyewitnesses report.

Reports indicate that a traveler met a band of highwaymen who hit him, deprived him of his clothes and belongings, and left him for dead somewhere between the two Judean cities. A number of other wayfarers spotted the man after the incident, but either declined or failed to render aid, until a resident of the Samaria region came upon the beleaguered victim and provided him with care and nourishment – but only after searching Twitter through his mobile device for any records of the man committing microaggressions against marginalized groups, or displaying inadequate sensitivity to the history of persecution certain minorities have faced.

“I was a little way behind the Samaritan fellow,” recalled one witness, who gave his name as Jeshua. “A couple of others – a priest and a Levite, if memory serves – avoided the man lying there, for whatever reason. It’s possible they had spotted something on his Instagram or Facebook history that made helping him problematic; I didn’t ask them. But the Samaritan guy stood there scrolling through the man’s Twitter for a bit, pausing here and there, and then finally bending down to check whether the poor guy was breathing, and what help he needed.”

“I asked him about that when I caught up to him, and he explained there were a couple of posts from last year and the year before that could be interpreted as assuming someone’s gender,” Jeshua continued. “But Hebrew and Aramaic are both gendered languages, and haven’t yet caught up to progressive sensibilities, so he decided to let it slide, and saved the man’s life.”

“I’d have helped, as well,” insisted another traveler identifying as Luke. “But my connection was slow out here in the desert, so I couldn’t do a thorough check of Twitter. Can you imagine what would have happened to me if I’d rendered assistance without an adequate search of the guy’s Twitter, and it turned out he had liked a tweet by someone who has been insufficiently vehement in denouncing unenthusiastic participants in the Women’s March? Man, I dodged an arrow there. I owe that Samaritan a drink or something.”

Please support our work through Patreon.