14 DAY TRIAL // Nowadays, one should be very careful about what they post on social media sites, because an inappropriate comment could easily ruin their career. You wouldn't think it would happen as often as it does, but people do get fired all the time based on their social media accounts.
That’s why, an unemployed lawyer from Delaware has decided to do something to stop that and achieve the legal separation of our personal lives and professional lives.
The Washington Post informs us that for the past five days, Brian Zulberti has been on a hunger strike outside the Supreme Court of the United States to promote the idea that these two aspects of our lives should be separated by law, and he declared that he would remain there “until coverage or death.”
He says that the aim of his campaign is to stop employers from firing staff because of racy pictures or controversial comments posted on social media, and claims he is willing to starve himself to death on the steps of America’s highest court for this cause unless he gets 90 seconds on a major national TV news network, during prime time, to spread his message.
“This is about privacy and the advancement of technology,” said Zulberti. “Soon it will be the total informative age, privacy out the window. The best we can do is adapt the law to the future now so we don’t turn into 1984, George Orwell style.”
He is currently camped outside the Supreme Court in a reclining beach chair, wearing a hat that says “Us Versus Them” and a shirt with a picture of him posing shirtless in front of the Capitol Building.
Zulberti, a graduate of the Villanova Law School, has his own story of online incidents and is no stranger to media notoriety, as last year, he made headlines for emailing a photo of himself in a t-shirt showing off his biceps instead of his resume to hundreds of law firms in an effort to get a job.
Moreover, he was fired as a high-school tennis coach for comments he made online about an opposing player. So, he started this campaign to bring justice to all those who had been impacted by the perils of social media, but before doing this, he had been traveling across the country trying to draw attention to cases of people being fired over controversial social media posts.
“We have Americans being fired everyday from coast to coast in almost every single state for simply doing completely legal things like having a beer after work or expressing an opinion that just doesn't happen to fly with the boss,” he told WUSA9.com.
So far, the protester has been offered an interview with The Washington Post, but he dismissed it as not high-profile enough, so he continues the hunger strike.