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Host Captain Adam Orton and his guest have a frank discussion about social media etiquette and how to stay out of trouble.
This podcast is for and about soldiers of the Canadian Army.
Its primary goal is to provide them with useful information through thoughtful and open discussions that reflect their mutual interests and concerns.
Though soldiers are our primary audience, the topics covered on this podcast should be relevant to anyone who supports our soldiers or who has an interest in Canadian military matters.
[Music Starts]
Dan Le Bouthillier: Someone on Reddit posted: “It’s almost like the way leadership and politicians are trying to represent the CF is intentionally aimed at undermining the rank and file’s morale.” Hey, you know what’s bad for morale? Racists.
Captain Orton: So, listen, we all have social media, and we all use social media. And, sometimes we all say something dumb on social media. I’m Captain Adam Orton, and today we are going to be talking about people who do dumb things on social media, what consequences it can have, and hopefully in there we are going to tell a couple of interesting stories.
I’m with Dan Le Bouthillier who is working at ADM (PA), the Assistant Deputy Minister of Public Affairs, and he is the guy who gets the phone call when somebody does something dumb. Hey Dan, how’s it going?
[Music Ends]
Dan Le Bouthillier: Hey, not bad. Thanks for having me on.
Capt Orton: Good to have you here. This is what we’re talking about: podcast. We are on a podcast and we are talking about social media. But maybe before we jump into that, how about you tell us a little bit about yourself.
Dan Le Bouthillier: Of course, so basically, I’m the head of media relations for DND CAF. So, whenever people do stupid things on social media and then reporters ask about it then I’m the guy who kind of has to deal with it. Sometimes it will be your boss who has to deal with it but I’m still kind of central to that process. So, I have a very vested interest in the whole issue. I wouldn’t call myself an expert on social media. I don’t tweet a whole lot. Mostly because I don’t have a whole lot of time and I am lazy, and I don’t really have anything interesting to say on social media. But basically, my job is dealing with media all day long, and sometimes social media is a topic that comes up. Probably far more often than I would like. But that’s kind of the nature of the business and we just have to deal with it.
Capt Orton: Might as well just come out and say it. Lately, the Army’s activities on social media, especially with regards to individual soldiers, has been a hot button topic in the media proper. There are all sorts of things that have been happening. Can you tell us, what’s been going on lately with regards to that?
Dan Le Bouthillier: Yeah, so we’ve had issues where some members might espouse some pretty heinous views on all sorts of topics, especially on race. And so sometimes they tweet about it or put some content up online thinking that this is going to make them feel better for about 13 seconds or so. But then the pain that comes afterwards is not necessarily something that they think about at the time. People tend to not always think about the possible repercussions as to what they do. And these are prime examples of it’s very cathartic for a very short period of time, at which point you have to deal with it for possibly the rest of your life.
Capt Orton: And it’s worth mentioning too that to our listeners out there I’m sure it’s going through your head right now. It’s like: “Oh, I did this”, or “I saw this guy do this thing”, and you’re like: “It wasn’t even that bad, why are they making a big deal out of it?” But I think for the most part, the stuff that comes across your desk is not somebody who makes an off-collar comment on something. But maybe it might be some of the more aggressive things that are really like hitting the media.
Dan Le Bouthillier: No one calls us for hating the Habs or who they chose for their number one draft pick or anything like that. Oftentimes, we’ll see a lot of people who post just thoughtless comments or just plain dumb comments online. And, sometimes it will get them into trouble and sometimes not, and it all depends on what that content is and what the broader context is as well. Sometimes, things will be extremely offensive, at which point actions are taken. Sometimes, they are just not the smartest things to put online. And I mean, these are just people and we’re people too, and everyone will make mistakes at times, and oftentimes. I mean, they are not intentional.
I mean, just our own social media team at one point a few years ago posted that we had purchased Australian F-18 Hornets and, of course, we were all very excited about our new purchase. So, we posted a picture of the Australian Super Hornets which are not the platform that we are buying. It was an accident. We don’t all know what aircraft looks like and what a Hornet versus a Super Hornet is. But you’ll have a lot of people who follow our accounts who know Defence, who know the Air Force, and who know what certain planes look like and they call us out about it. And there was an article about it. And yeah, it wasn’t the greatest move. And a lot of people at the time were kind of upset. In hindsight, it is kind of amusing though I'm sure a lot of people might still be a bit sore about it. But it happens, right? But that’s an example of things that are inadvertent and are not ill intentioned. Posting racial epithets on the other hand; kind of the problem.
Capt Orton: Yeah, of course. And it’s funny that you mention that because there is definitely a scale. Like I recall one time I was working at the Army social media doing Facebook stuff. I got a phone call from ADM(PA) because they had posted a German APC and they called it a tank. And, this poor individual was getting slammed by emails being called an idiot because they couldn’t tell the difference between an APC and a tank when it’s the CAF official thing. And even that can be kind of disruptive. The thing is, I think everybody has had some sort of experience. And, I’m thinking of just an example that happened to me this week was I’m part of a group from an old battalion that I was with, and they posted a screenshot of a guy who basically said, I can’t remember what the context was, but it was like: “We’re coming for you, you’re an idiot signed battalion name”. And it turned out this guy was in the battalion in the 1980s so not even a recent member of the CAF. And he’s throwing around the capital ‘A’ Army name, threatening people online. And so, I would say it is a good news story because the people in that group were just like: “Who is this guy?”. And we’re trying to find him and be like: “Hey man, what the hell!”. But there are things like that, that are going down.
Dan Le Bouthillier: Yeah and you know, it’s hard too because, you might remember this in the olden days of social media, when everything was still kind of ramping up and becoming more of a thing. You had a lot of people who had their professional accounts and you know: “Hey! My name is Dan and I work at DND”, and I’m posting pictures of planes and tanks and that is it. And then you would have: “Hey! This is Dan with a different name, but I’m the same guy as that other account, but this is my personal account, and I will here have opinions about political issues”, or so on and so forth. I think that in its infancy we had a tendency to disassociate our professional lives from our personal lives. But I don’t think that we can really do that at this point in time.
You know, search platforms will find everything in one fell swoop. I don’t think anyone that I know has a separate account unless you’re an entertainer of sorts. Sometimes they’ll have their professional account separated from their personal account or whatever. But for the most part, we all have just one account. I think this is where it is getting harder for people to delineate what is appropriate, what is not, what can affect my work and what is not and what could get me fired and what won’t, right? So, I think we are in a very interesting space right now because a lot of people who use social media didn’t grow up with it. However, we find ourselves in a situation now where privates entering the Forces were born in 2002-2003. They have been a part of the social media era forever. So, they probably understand it way more than guys like you and I who we were talking about seeing Tron when it came out in theaters, or whatever the case might be. Or how I grew up without a VCR until I was twelve, that’s ridiculous. Someone joining the Forces now has no idea what a VCR is most likely.
Capt Orton: Yeah, exactly.
Dan Le Bouthillier: And I sound like an old man when I say this, but times are changing, and of course they are. And it will probably take a generation before we all figure out how to properly use social media. Because this is just the way things work, right?
Capt Orton: So, at the ADM(PA) level now, I’m thinking as you're telling me about this, senior personnel in the military, they have been around for much longer, and much like us. In fact, I can think of a situation where at one point a senior officer once told me: “I don’t do social media, I don’t even know why I should care about that, it’s not my thing”. Well yeah that is true, but if you're commanding a unit or something like that and all your troops are doing it and you need to have a, not that I’m telling what a commander should be doing, but you probably want to have a good grasp of what your troops are doing so that it’s easy to wrap your mind around the stuff that we are talking about right now. At your level, what happens when somebody crosses a line?
Dan Le Bouthillier: Well you kind of mention it is a very handy tool to communicate. If you have your own unit that you're commanding or whatever, you can reach out to all of your troops at the same time using that one platform. But I mean there are repercussions if you don’t use it the right way. They can be both professional and personal, right? So we have all of these regulations and orders that apply, some to civilians, some to the military, some to both. So, the easiest one that comes to mind for instance, is just the code of ethics and values. They apply to you and I, they apply to civilians, military, and some of them are just kind of common sense. They talk about valuing diversity, maintaining and creating a workplace free from harassment, acting all times in the public interest, acting with integrity, being non-partisan. These are core elements that pretty much come with the job once you sign on the dotted line, or sign your letter of offer, you’re basically saying: “Yes I agree to these terms”. So, if you kind of cross the line, you shouldn’t be surprised that there might be repercussions.
There is no actual scale that your comments will be measured against, like saying this is a 1/10 this is a 10/10, you get fired. This is not how it works; it is far more nuanced than that. But people need to be aware that there can be repercussions, nonetheless. It can be administrative in nature, it can be just being told by your boss, getting jacked up for what you said, and no one really wants that. I don’t think anyone is looking for confrontation with their boss. People tend to forget as well you can have some personal repercussions as well if you say something heinous enough. Your family might not really be into the same things that you are. So not necessarily that they would disown you, but they might not really appreciate it. Same with your friends and your colleagues. So, there are broader repercussions than just getting an email from your boss saying: “Hey! don’t do that”, right? It can hurt way more than that.
Captain Orton: There are definitely people who try to, not out of any sense of malice or anything like that, but let’s say conceal their involvement in the Forces so that they can have maybe a little bit more freedom of expression and both protect themselves and other people out there. But the other thing is, if you think you’re doing that, but for example you have pictures of yourself in uniform doing stuff, a motivated individual can then dig into your account and then find something from 8 years ago that you forgot you put in there. Like “I graduated basic, I did it.” And then all of a sudden all of that unravels anyways, and that can become a pretty complex issue.
Dan Le Bouthillier: Oh, totally. Open source intelligence is a thing, right? So, you can still glean enough information to at least put together enough of a picture of an individual that you might not know their name, but you might get to it if you do enough digging, right? You might find clues as to what their email address might be, and then you type their email address in Facebook and “boop” this is the actual person. Like: “Oh, Joe Smith”. So this is the guy. And these things happen all the time. Like Reddit is one of those sites where, you know, you find these stories about people who think they are anonymous and all of a sudden, they get found out as to who exactly they are and there are repercussions to these people. And they are actually, they get worse, and more as time progresses. So, yeah good point.
Captain Orton: You know, that’s a lot of doom and gloom also but let’s talk about what are some of the right things that soldiers and people can do on social media, that, let’s say keeps them out of the public spotlight? I mean people want to talk about what they do; like we are going to be on social media right now, you know what I mean? It’s going out there, we want people to listen to us, obviously there’s got to be some give and take on that. You know, what does right look like? What does a good social media account look like in order to make sure people are safe, and can still talk about their views without destroying their careers?
Dan Le Bouthillier: I think it’s quite simple. You know, just be civil, just don’t be a complete ‘ass’. Can we say ‘ass’? I mean I said it twice. But I mean you wouldn’t act that way in public, so you wouldn’t walk up to random strangers and say: “Your clothes look ridiculous because of this reason”. And you know, you’re whatever. So why do we do that online? Most people don’t unless they have a fake account. And, you’ll go through Twitter, or whatever the case may be, and you’ll just be like, most of the vile comments will come from anonymous accounts or fake accounts. And, you can kind of tell that they are fake because this person’s name is probably not “Groucho Smith” or whatever the case may be. So, if people can just be a bit more civil about things, and if I have to explain what is right or what is wrong on a podcast for people to not post stupid Twitter things then there is a bigger problem here. And, I think that if you look at the broader scale of things, most CAF members, or most people for that matter, post pictures of their cats and their grandchildren, or their kids. Most of the heinous stuff doesn’t come from named individuals. They might become named if they are found out. But even in the CAF, once in a while we will see someone’s horrible comments associated with their names, and then you find out they're CAF members, and then there are repercussions. Always. There are always repercussions. I don’t know how severe they might be, because administrative measures happen and that’s between the person and their chain of command. But they happen, nonetheless.
Capt Orton: I would say, the stuff that I have seen that I find may be problematic is stuff where it doesn’t start off with: “I feel this way about this race” or whatever. But it usually starts off with, let’s say, so for example, you know somebody is talking about freedom of speech. And then somebody will say: “Oh, well this is why I think this is problematic” and then it kind of goes into a back and forth. And then that is when you fall down the rabbit hole, and people start saying things that they can’t take back.
Dan Le Bouthillier: Yeah.
Capt Orton: And, I think that those are the ones where it’s a slow burn emotionally. And then all of a sudden someone gets involved and they feel protected behind the screen of social media. And then they start really telling people what they think, because they are frustrated and angry, and the other person doesn’t agree with them. Eventually somebody at some point is like: “yeah, no”, screenshot, send to ADM(PA), “Look at this nut job”. And, then you’re like: “Yeah okay”.
Dan Le Bouthillier: Yeah now we’ve got to deal with it. And I mean it’s funny, right? Freedom of speech is an interesting one, because the people who will complain about that particular topic won’t do it with their actual name. So, if you feel that strongly about an issue, then why are you anonymous online? If you really want to fight it, then do it the right way. It’s just kind of amusing to me that people think that they’re going to, they have these very strong views on a certain topic, which I get. And if you want to dedicate your life’s purpose to it, then more power to you and do it. But you’re not going to do it with 280 characters at a time on Twitter fighting with what might just be a ‘bot’ that is not even a real person.
Capt Orton: Yeah just some guy sitting in a Russian server farm, just like laughing.
Dan Le Bouthillier: But it’s true right, so you see a lot of these hateful comments or just things that are inappropriate, or just kind of silly at some point. And you're just like what is this person really thinking that they are going to accomplish with this? I don’t understand it, right? “Ah, well you're ugly”. Okay cool. Thanks for informing the whole world on Twitter on your account that has 3 followers. No one cares, right? So how about you just be civil and maybe you’ll have more followers. And, just put your name there and you’ll represent yourself, your family, or your employer, whatever the case might be.
But this is the thing that I really dislike about the whole anonymous aspects of social media, and I wish that it wasn’t that easy to just create accounts, but this is the world that we live in. But like, I find it very hard to just go on Twitter, I say Twitter but any social media account for that matter, but I follow Twitter quite a bit, and you know, to just kind of see the comments that just degenerate so quickly. There is so little value in reading them, that sometimes I just put my phone aside. Like why do I even have an account? I don’t need this; this is not making my life any better. And, it’s probably not making the person who’s tweeting, their life better either. So, I just don’t get it.
Capt Orton: Well I think in the moment sometimes it just feels right. And then by next morning you're just like, forgotten about it, and just driving on. And then that little ticking time bomb is just sitting there, just waiting.
Dan Le Bouthillier: For your CO to find out.
Capt Orton: Yeah exactly. Just generating emails in the background. We probably wouldn’t be doing our job talking about social media in the military if we didn’t at least dip our toe into the realm of politics. Understanding that as a Canadian citizen you're definitely allowed to have political opinions and you know if you're liberal, conservative, green party, libertarian, all that stuff. But what it means to say as a soldier: “I think the Prime Minister is terrible”. How does that work? What is the deal with that?
Dan Le Bouthillier: Well I mean, we kind of go back to what we were talking about earlier. Just the basic code of values and ethics where you're supposed to be apolitical and be loyal to the institution and to your country. I mean at the end of the day the Prime Minister is the Prime Minister, you may not like him, but do you have to put that up on social media? I don’t really see the value in it. And if you really feel like you do, then you’ll have to deal with the repercussions.
It’s tough because I have worked at Defence for pretty much my entire adult life. I’ve been here for almost 17 years, so mathematically 40% of my life. I believe in the institution I work with and have worked with tremendous people. People who have fought in actual wars, they’ve had bullets whizzing by their helmets, people who have fought fires, fought floods, rebuilt nations, cared for Canada’s most vulnerable people during this pandemic. I mean I’m proud of myself for just mowing my lawn sometimes and I feel like I deserve a pat on the back. And these people who will put their life on the line to fight for our freedom, deserve some freedom of their own, right? And I strongly believe that. But, you know, social media, like anything else, has to be used responsibly and within the broader regulations. And it’s about self-discipline and our own values and ethics within the Defence Team. And, you know, doing the right thing. If people can do the right thing on deployment, surely, they can do it on Twitter. Right?
Capt Orton: Yeah, and the other thing is at the end of the day, it’s not about censorship or telling people what they can and can’t, well I guess it is in a way. But the deal is when you sign on the dotted line that you give up certain rights. Sometimes you’ve got to work weekends, sometimes you’ve got to go to dangerous places or places you don’t want to be. Or northern postings to Alert and do stuff that’s generally not fun. But that’s the deal, right? You get guaranteed work, you get taken care of by the Canadian public, you get benefits, your family is taken care of. But the deal is you can’t go on Twitter and tell everybody how you feel about the Prime Minister at the time. Some people might see that as a freedom of speech issue, it’s not really because the deal with the universality service and all of that stuff, is that unfortunately the expectation is that you’re going to be professional towards the government. And that’s, I mean I hate to say this is like abused way too much, I think within the military as it stands, but that’s the law. And if you don’t like it, vote for a change or get out. Because those are the rules. Not only that, but everybody knows that coming in. We get classes on it, it’s covered. I shouldn’t be jacking up my audience. Audience I’m not yelling at you, it’s cool. But that’s the reality, we should all know that. If you don’t know that then you should probably look into it because it’s important. Like it’s a part of the deal.
Dan Le Bouthillier: This is life. There are rules everywhere. There are laws everywhere. So, yes freedom of speech, yes. But there are limitations. It doesn’t give you the freedom to hurt someone else or to threaten bodily harm, or to hurt someone else, or whatever the case might be. So, I have the freedom to move around as I please within my country. Sure, but you can’t do it at 160 miles an hour in your Corvette on a highway. You can’t. There are rules against that, and if you get pulled over by the cops, try saying: “No, I’m free to do what I want in this country”. Let me know how that works out for you.
Capt Orton: There’s a lot of videos on YouTube about that, you can look it up.
Dan Le Bouthillier: Well yeah there are, they are quite entertaining. So, I mean rules are in place for a reason. We don’t all have to agree on every rule; this is how a democracy works, right? It’ll be determined by the general population to a certain extent at least. So, we just have to accept that they exist and try to work within them. So, there are things that you can say and things that you can’t say, and that’s just like you said: ‘Them’s the rules, them’s the breaks”. I think that we tend to forget that with social media because it’s kind of a new thing, right? Facebook dates back to '06, '07-ish, give or take.
Capt Orton: Yeah, that’s when it really took off.
Dan Le Bouthillier: Exactly. So, woah it’s been way over a decade, it’s been 13 years. That’s not a huge amount of time. Technology progresses so fast and people are like, “It’s not social media it was a blog”. Or I put these comments on an article on the CBC website or whatever the case may be, because we still don’t see everything. We still see social media almost as a separate entity. But it’s so ubiquitous that it’s part of everything. It's just the Web now. Twitter is not separate from everything else. It’s a social media platform sure, but it’s all part and parcel of the same thing. This is kind of the point I was trying to make earlier, it’s going to take a generation for all of us to kind of figure out, and by that time there’s going to be something new that’s going to be even more offensive or whatever the case might be. But it’s just going to take time for us to all get acclimatized to it. Like I said, we didn’t all grow up with social media, nor did you. It just kind of became a thing. I’m not a social media expert, I’m just the guy who has to deal with it when people mess it up within the Forces or DND, and I see some serious consequences to these people. I’ve seen people get fired or disciplined, or whatever the case might be. And, rightfully so.
Capt Orton: It might be worth mentioning also that there’s personal consequences. And I know a lot of people don’t necessarily think like this, but if you’re going to commit your entire life and put your life on the line, and put your life at risk, and then say something dumb on Twitter that tears apart the Forces at a parliamentary level, what’s the point of all that sacrifice that you’ve made if you’re going to hurt all of the soldiers around you? Because maybe the Canadian public says yeah, we don’t need an Army. And now all of a sudden, our operational capabilities degraded as a result of the Canadian public thinking that we are a problematic institution that doesn’t need to exist anymore.
Dan Le Bouthillier: Well it’s kind of funny in that vein. So, it does impact I guess at the core, or it can impact operational effectiveness. If you know that your brother in arms has certain views and posts certain things on Twitter or whatever the case might be. It’s a problem and it kind of reminded me of a story, a thing that I saw about the new Canadian Army order on hateful conduct. So, someone on Reddit posted: “It’s almost like, the way leadership and politicians are trying to represent the CF is intentionally aimed at undermining the rank and file's morale”. And so, this person is like: “Every sensible person agrees racism has no place in any institution, it should be rooted out”. It’s just weird how they purposefully represented the CF. So it’s kind of these weird comments that show up on Reddit, on the Canadian Forces sub-reddit. Where you’re like: “What's the point of this comment?” And someone responded back saying: “Hey, you know what’s bad for morale? Racists”, you know, and this other person ended up deleting their account or deleting at least their comment.
And so, some social media accounts or social media platforms are kind of self-policing within certain groups. And I think that kind of happens in real life as well within units. So, I don’t, you know, it’s obviously a problem. Statistically speaking I don’t know how much of a problem it really is but given the number of social media accounts that probably exist within CAF and DND members, and the amount of issues we have to deal with, you can kind of come up with your own conclusion on it. But there is a certain degree of self-policing that happens. It’s obviously not enough and I think a lot of it is culture change that takes time. It has to be done willingly and deliberately over the fullness of time. And I think that’s at the core of the issue, especially when we think about people tweeting heinous, vile things on Twitter. It’s not because Twitter exists that these people have certain views. They just use that as a vehicle to communicate them. But there’s a bigger problem here at play. So, I think that’s kind of the core that we have to look at as an institution is, you know, how do we fix that?
Capt Orton: I’m going to just like, maybe throw this out there as maybe a challenge or to see what your comments are on this. Because, I’ve had this discussion with a couple of people. To kind of talk a little bit about that comment that you just brought up. Soldiers have off hand comments and make things like, I remember when I went through Basic everyone was something. You know, somebody is a computer nerd, someone is a hick from Alberta, a farmer, there’s always something to tease and joke about. And, I think particularly among people who operate in high stress environments, you see this as a morale building exercise in a sense that you're testing your friends to see what their mental state is like. So, if you make a comment to somebody and it’s like a: “Hey how are you doing today you big hick?”, and that person reacts really negatively to that. Then you're like: “Oh my god, like what’s going on buddy, what’s wrong?” And we kind of have these, we test each other with that as a means of building camaraderie. And it’s certainly possible that troops may view this as an attempt to lock down their ability to do that. To just build that camaraderie and morale. What would your response be to somebody that has that perspective on that?
Dan Le Bouthillier: Yeah and I think everybody kind of does that. We tease our friends, our buddies, and sometimes they react in a certain way and sometimes another way. And it depends on one’s state of mind, they might have something going on or whatever the case may be. I think that’s normal human behaviour. The issue with social media is that you can’t target your comment just to your buddy unless you send them a DM or whatever. At which point, it could still live forever if they screenshot it and decide to use it against you or whatever the case might be. So, joking around in a certain context is always going to happen, it’s been a thing since the dawn of man I’m sure. But, on social media even if I want to be like: “Hey Adam you big nut, you know, crazy guy” or something far more offensive, whatever, all of your followers on Twitter are going to see it, none of whom know me, so their interpretation of those comments might be vastly different. So, if you are talking to your hick buddy from Alberta, that you just met, and you're like: “Hey Joe, you farm person” or something, whatever.
Capt Orton: Yeah “You big fat hick, what’s going on?”.
Dan Le Bouthillier: Exactly. He might just be like: “You’re an idiot”, you know. But you’ll have this interaction with an individual, and it’s a moment in time. And, it’s a moment in time between you two. That same interaction happens on Twitter, it's a moment in time between you two and the rest of the world. And it will live there forever. There is a definite danger in the way that people, be it CAF or not, we use social media. And how this could turn into misinformation or disinformation. We saw it, I think it was in March when a lot of this COVID, when the pandemic was really gearing up, and people were starting to work from home and there was a lot of uncertainty in Canada and across the world as to what would happen next. And so, there were questions about, are they going to lock down cities? And in the meantime, Maple Resolve got cancelled and they were bringing back all these…
Capt Orton: I remember that.
Dan Le Bouthillier: …yeah bringing back tanks, and light armoured vehicles, and so on and so forth on trains. And people saw this, and they were posting on social media that: “Oh my God, they are moving tanks around, these ones are coming towards Montreal”. And Montreal was pretty hard hit by COVID. Are they going to lock down the city? Is the military going to institute Martial Law? And so, on and so forth. It’s like dudes relax, we are just bringing this back to Gagetown. But no one asked and they just kind of put this onto social media and then it kind of spread from there. And then we’re getting media call after media call about whether or not these were headed to Montreal or what the plan was when really, it was pretty innocuous. The Ex got cancelled and they are just going back home.
Capt Orton: Anything else you want to add before we wrap up?
Dan Le Bouthillier: You know, not really. I feel like I sound like I’m anti-social media and I’m not at all. I think it’s a great way to communicate and express our views, and learn more about the world, and what’s happening. But I just feel that there is enough hate that shows up online that we don’t need to contribute to it. If we can just be civil and responsible as to how we as an institution use these platforms, then we are all the better for it. I think Canadians expect more from CAF members, and you might already feel that way too. So, I kind of feel the same way as just a member of the Defence Team and working here in awe of the work that people do. So, I just want us to succeed as an institution. And, you know, being self-serving and lazy, I just don’t want more work. So, just don’t post this crap, and I won't have to deal with it.
Capt Orton: Facebook the world like you would Facebook you mom.
Dan Le Bouthillier: Yeah, I like that, that’s perfect.
Capt Orton: Tagline, I will put this at the front. Alright well that was Dan Le Bouthillier from ADM(PA). He’s dealing with all the mess-ups that we’ve been doing on social media. Thanks for coming Dan!
Dan Le Bouthillier: Including this podcast. It was my pleasure.
Capt Orton: Yeah exactly.
[Music Starts]
I’m Captain Adam Orton with the Canadian Army Podcast. As usual, follow us without typing anything horrible on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube. And as usual, stay frosty.
[Music Ends]
Dan Le Bouthillier: Stay frosty, look at you.
Captain Orton: Yeah, it’s my thing, I don’t know. We actually get emails about that: “Where did ‘Stay frosty’ come from?” I don’t know. I picked it up from Army stuff. Apparently, it originally became active in pop culture in Aliens. Like in the movie Aliens. Which I haven’t even watched in recent, it’s on my to-do list, I’m actually going to sit down and re-watch all of Aliens. But that’s where it comes from, so they say ‘stay frosty’, and so I don’t know. I used it one time because they wanted me to come up with a closing line and that’s what I went with. And now that’s my thing and people complain to me when I don’t use it. So now, it just is what it is.
Dan Le Bouthillier: See I heard it first like in a Call of Duty game. I was talking to General Rouleau at one point, he said we’ve got to stay frosty on this. Or something along those lines. I was just like, goddamn that’s cool, stay frosty. I wish I had enough discipline to join the Armed Forces. Then I could use those words, but I can’t.
Capt Orton: No, you can totally use it as a civilian. Hey, when you’re playing Call of Duty you can use it. You know how it is, when we develop these things too, like when people come up with this stuff. Like, it’s really popular in the UK, apparently. There’s this weird translation. I can’t even think of an example, but you say boots and then people start saying boats. And then, other people start saying ships, and then people are talking about ships, but they mean shoes.
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And it’s weird because it’s all from point-to-point-to-point, and it’s all an expression now. You look back 100 years ago somebody started saying that, and now it’s a thing, because reasons.
Dan Le Bouthillier: Because reasons.
Capt Orton: People are weird.
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