From Peter’s desk

There Is Something Wrong With All of You

October 22, 2026 · By Peter Ciaccia

There is something wrong with all of you.

It’s okay. Me too.

I’m going to be honest: I’m not a computer internet guy. Ten years ago, I honestly didn’t know the people on social media were even real. To me, it was toilet entertainment — something to scroll through while keeping up with my younger brothers and the rest of the family.

So I’m still learning.

I was raised in a completely different world. You didn’t talk to strangers. You didn’t give information to people you didn’t know. You didn’t make eye contact with every character walking down the street. We grew up seeing pictures of missing kids on milk cartons.

Stranger danger wasn’t a joke. It was the rule.

Today, we’re judged by how many followers we have on social media.

Followers? Do you mean stalkers?

Yep. I’m not wrong.

I monitor my children’s social media like I’m the FBI. Meanwhile, my millennial wife orders DoorDash and has a complete stranger bring us an unsealed paper bag from McDonald’s. Then she makes him leave it on the floor outside the door — in Florida, where the bugs are bigger than my cat — because that’s contactless delivery.

For safety.

You can’t make this up.

We build our "network" and our "team" over Zoom and Google Meet, like catfishing isn’t a thing. My kids watch YouTube videos of adults opening toys all day, like that isn’t creepy, except those people supposedly make millions doing it.

So apparently the new rule is: don’t trust anybody in real life, but trust everybody through a screen.

People come up to me in stores now and ask, "Are you Peter from a Facebook group?" I’m polite. I say hello. But honestly, I’m also a little creeped out. Then I start wondering if I’m the rude one because I didn’t study everybody online long enough to recognize them back.

They know my face. They know things I’ve said. They may know my family, my businesses, and what I had an opinion about three weeks ago.

I know absolutely nothing about them.

I’ve spoken to thousands of people across the country and around the world through Facebook and LinkedIn. We’ve had Zoom meetings, talked business, had laughs, and had genuinely good conversations.

But where is the line between knowing somebody and having a pen pal?

Is it the video? Does seeing somebody blink on a screen suddenly make them part of your life?

Because people who know you have been in your life. Pen pals know your story.

There’s a difference.

Then there’s who we pretend to be. Being charming and talking game is not being deceptive. That’s personality. Being 300 pounds and using filters to make yourself look like a supermodel is deceptive.

It’ll also make it very hard to find you if you ever get kidnapped.

The problem is, all this fake familiarity doesn’t stay online. Eventually, people start believing they know you well enough to confront you in real life.

The other day, I was eating at a restaurant with my family. I went out front to smoke a cigarette. When I finished, I flicked it into the street. I know — probably littering. But smoking outside is legal, there was no ashtray, and I honestly don’t know what you’re supposed to do with it. Put it in your pocket?

I went back inside to enjoy my meal. A few minutes later, some man walks in, asks the hostess for me, and comes over to my table with his arms open to ask why I was littering — in the middle of the restaurant, in front of my family.

I looked at him, ignored him completely, and went back to my focaccia and olive oil.

Later, I thought about it. Was I wrong? Probably. But what was his desired outcome? A fistfight? An apology? Applause from the other people in the restaurant?

I can tell you this: right or wrong, I would have fist-fought before I apologized.

I’ve encountered hundreds of situations like that. Some ended up involving police and other major situations because some internet guy decided he could come to a stranger’s house and confront him over something he didn’t like in a post.

I was definitely wrong in the beginning too. But I grew up in a world where, if a stranger came at you angry, you defended yourself before you listened.

That’s still the world in my head.

And now we’ve brought the same made-up nonsense into business.

Nobody wants to say "structure" anymore. They say "team," because structure sounds like somebody is actually in charge. Nobody wants to say "accountability" or "responsibility." They say "circle of trust" and call it protocol, because protocol sounds official even when nobody is responsible for anything.

Then comes the feelings.

Tell somebody no, and you didn’t just reject the deal — you hurt them. Miss a deadline, and somehow the real problem becomes how the conversation made everybody feel. Business decisions get treated like personal insults.

Business is not supposed to run on whether everybody leaves the meeting feeling emotionally supervised. It runs on numbers, promises, deadlines, and consequences.

Your feelings don’t change the math. They don’t pay the bill. They don’t finish the job.

We took real words with real obligations and replaced them with softer words that let everybody avoid the obligation. Then we took real relationships and replaced them with followers, meetings, profiles, and filters.

So yes, there is something wrong with all of you.

It’s okay. Me too.

I just come from a world where a stranger was a stranger, a friend showed up in person, trust meant responsibility, and if you came looking for a confrontation, you understood there might be one.

Apparently, that world doesn’t exist anymore.

Now we have followers.