In July of 2005, I went to see Batman Begins at the Holiday Twin drive-in in Fort Collins, CO with a friend of mine. We’d been bouncing around in anticipation for several months waiting for this movie to come out. Leaning forward in the front seat of my Oldsmobile, we shoveled snacks into our faces & geeked out. She was one of my geek girl friends. Getting excited for superhero/fantasy/action movies, standing in line to see them, then jabbering excitedly about them afterward was something that connected us.
We weren’t on Myspace. We didn’t have Facebook. We talked in person, over plates of food & big glasses filled with adult beverages. We chatted at the office where we both worked. It didn’t matter much that she was a Conservative, Christian gun owner from Texas, or that I was basically the exact opposite of all those things.
Sure, we gave each other shit about it. We made a lot of jokes. We also asked each other a lot of questions & somehow, it worked out fine.
Fast forward to 2008. I’ve left Colorado to live in France. The sequel to Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, had been released. I saw it at a movie theater in Paris with my husband. Barack Obama was about to be elected president. Like many of my friends, I had an account on Myspace, which I was getting fed up with. I joined Facebook in 2007 & preferred the clean, quiet of Facebook, as opposed to the glittery, .gif-ridden shouting & bickering of Myspace.
It was right around this time that the pro-Sarah Palin posts from my Conservative Geek Girl friend started showing up. We’d kept in touch through various places on the Internet since my move & up til then, most of the posts I saw were geeky & personal fragments that I was interested in seeing. Yes, I want to see your vacation pics. I am interested in looking at entire photo albums of your new hairdo, or that weird thing on your cat’s neck. Yes. Absolutely.
What I wasn’t interested in seeing was right-wing propaganda from websites stating that the U.S. should put Arabs & Muslims in interment camps.
I feel very strongly about this because I detest hateful, racist bullshit. It also hit too close to home. My last name is Arabic. I chose to take this name when I married my half-French, half-Arab husband.
So there it was… the first friendship I had that crumbled as a result of social networking stupidity.
Could we have talked it out? Maybe. If I were more of a talking-out kind of person & could rid myself of doubt – if I could look at her without wondering if she would be okay with my husband being put in some fucking interment camp.
Nah, for me, it’s sometimes easier to just tell someone to stay the hell away from me. I know many people say that “life is short” & “don’t burn bridges” & some other clichéd shit about how it’s bad to sever friendships, but I feel that life is too short to spend it being surrounded by ignorant, bigoted shits who piss me off.
If you disagree, then you’re more patient than I am. Good for you. You’re nice. I’m mean. You’re the winner. I’m okay with that.
Since then, I’ve fired more friends. Some them I didn’t know very well. When someone I never have any contact with is posting horrible things online & our only common link is that we both come from the same shitty little town, it’s easy to unfriend them. It’s also unlikely that they’ll care or even notice. They’ll just continue posting their nonsense.
Other times, it was people I’d known for 20+ years. Just because you went to high school together & got into some trouble together back in the day, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re still friends – or that you even like one other at all.
In the past 5 years I’ve been on Facebook, I’ve discovered where almost all of my friends stand on every single issue. I know who is for or against gay marriage. I know who thinks Obama is a gay, Kenyan-born Muslim bent on destroying America. I’ve been preached to, bitched at & insulted. I know who thinks being Palestinian or pro-choice is evil. I’ve heard why I shouldn’t eat meat, wheat, Oreos, Chick-fil-A, daisies & yellow snow.
And it works both ways. I’ve been deleted by at least two dozen people. Maybe it’s because I’m a godless, foul-mouthed, carnivorous, Obama-voting, pro-choice lover of gays & Palestinians & that I live in a wicked, socialist country like France. If none of those are reasons why, I have to assume it’s because of all the fart jokes & if you can’t handle fart jokes, then it’s probably for the best.
I try to refrain from the initial impulse to delete someone. That ‘hide’ button on Facebook is an excellent feature. But, a friend of mine recently pointed out: if I have to hide posts from people & I can’t stand anything they say, how can I call them my friend?
I think there’s a lot of truth in that, but it doesn’t seem reasonable to delete someone every single time I see a post that irritates me. So, I hide them. And sometimes, forget that they are even there at all. So, I guess when that happens, we’re not such good friends, right?
I’m not under any illusions about myself. I know I’ve posted things on Facebook or Twitter that someone didn’t like. Over the past year or so, I’ve refrained from sharing certain things on Facebook because my group of friends, while mostly like-minded thinkers, is still rather diverse, so I don’t want to force all of my opinions on everyone & don’t feel like dealing with the backlash & bitching.
I prefer to reserve most of that for this site, which people can visit only if they want to.
And there’s my main problem with the obnoxious & constant political & religious posts on Facebook – the assumption that everyone on your friend list wants to be force-fed your belief system & opinions. Go shout about those things on a personal blog, or on Twitter. Why fight with former classmates in front of your coworkers & relatives?
Filling everyone’s news feed with an endless stream of shitty Facebook memes about politics & religion will not convert anyone, or convince people with opposing viewpoints to come over to your side. This is like flashing a bunch of bumper stickers at someone instead of using your words. We don’t all live by the same set of social standards. Your rhetoric will not prompt me to start voting Republican, or to be okay with religion. (Yes, it works both ways, but this is my rant, so we’re looking at it from my viewpoint.)
Of course, if you tell an obnoxious poster to shut it, they’ll likely come back with something about their Freedom of Speech. This isn’t about your fucking 1st Amendment rights. It’s about common courtesy, recognizing the varying ideals of your friends, acquaintances & family members & making an effort not to inflame them.
I’m not saying people shouldn’t discuss things, but one of the nice things about Facebook is that not only can you hide what you don’t want to see, you can also hide what you don’t want others to see. Try putting more energy into playing nice & being courteous & a little less into trying to to shove your belief system down everyone’s throat.
Now here we are. The third movie of this Batman trilogy has been released & we all know what happened in Aurora, so I won’t even get into the details of that. Suffice it to say that being from Colorado, a huge fan of Batman & Christopher Nolan’s movies, it hit close to home. Reading the news hurt. Watching my Colorado friends trying to locate friends & loved ones hurt. Wondering if all of my friends were okay… it hurt.
It still hurts.
Before victims had been identified, before families had been notified, the rotten, repugnant ranting had started with people spouting off about their own political & religious agendas. The trolling & conspiracy theories popped up. My level of disgust & disdain is hard to articulate, but I can tell you that I’ve been making good use of that hide button recently.
I said to my husband, “It’s so damn annoying, all of this shit cluttering up my news feed: guns, the 2nd Amendment, religion, politics… aren’t you getting sick of it, too?”
Olivier, he shrugs. “I guess I would, but I don’t see much of that. Most of my friends aren’t Americans.”
I thought about this & he’s right. The people I have to hide, who do the most shouting, are Americans. So, Americans, why are we shouting like this? Why do we have such a useless fucking need to be right & convince others that our belief system is best? Why do we feel the need to make spontaneous announcements & sophistic arguments about what we think & why others are wrong for thinking something different? Unless the goal is to alienate a certain percentage of the people you’re acquainted with, I really don’t get it.
Would you go to a party with all the people you know & start randomly shouting about religion & politics, or would you just chat, laugh, have some snacks & a few cocktails?
Sometimes I miss the days when my news feed was filled with vacation photos, status updates about someone’s day, what they’re eating & whatever the hell that thing is on your cat’s neck.
I would love to have a discussion on this but I feel like barriers have been established here that prevent me from doing so. If you’re open to feedback, know that I would love the opportunity to hear and understand where you stand on social topics beyond the typical boorish American issue. I truly wouldn’t mind seeing your views in a news feed. Deciding not to post them because you don’t want to deal with backlash only serves to remove you from the pool of thinkers participating in active dialogue on such controversial matters. To have dialogue on those viewpoints may open all participants to the marketplace of ideas available though. To me, the discussion is *the meat* of the how issues affect us really rather than the mainstream viewpoints that most people seem to choose from when posting all the bumper sticker crap on their Facebook walls. It’s obviously ok to opt out though because you really are committing yourself to defend your views and subjecting yourself to the scrutiny of your Facebook “Friends” among other complications. Sometimes that sucks but sometimes it’s also very, very rewarding. Just saying, wouldn’t mind hearing where you come from on some of these social ideas.
I’m not above discussion, but one of the points I was making with this post is that Facebook is not always the best forum for politics, religion & things of that nature. I did not say I wouldn’t post my views – I said I wouldn’t post them on Facebook very often. When I shout at the world, I do it here, or sometimes on Twitter, as I stated in the post. If you want to hear where I’m coming from on various topics that I don’t discuss on Facebook, that’s where you can hear it.
Removing myself from the “pool of thinkers” seems pretty inaccurate. Facebook isn’t necessarily some intellectual forum or brain trust. Far from it, even though many Facebook users are intelligent, thinking people. By saying I don’t want to deal with backlash is not to say that I can’t handle it, or I obviously wouldn’t be writing blog posts like this one. Most of the “active dialogue” I see on Facebook is sophistic shouting. Much of it is antagonistic & not constructive at all.
Then there’s the fact that I use Facebook for networking with colleagues & for keeping in touch with friends & family members. I’d rather have conversations with them about their projects & their lives rather than heated political & religious discussions that ultimately go nowhere.
And I didn’t necessarily say here that people should only post puppy pictures & status updates about their dinner on Facebook. The point of the entire rant had more to do with alienating people in your life who may live by a very different set of social standards & that live, in-person relationships prevent much of this behavior. Many people force their beliefs on their network of Internet friends & drive them away.
I fail to see how opting out subjects me to the scrutiny of my Facebook friends. I’ve opened myself up to more scrutiny by writing this blog post than I have by hiding people’s posts on my news feed. If anyone wants to scrutinize me for ignoring their obnoxious shouting about guns & Jesus, that’s not my problem.
I’ve never understood why people have Facebook arguments. My friends on Facebook (American and otherwise) are people who treat others with respect and are open to a wide variety of viewpoints, and are people whose viewpoints I am genuinely interested in hearing about. Facebook is a happy place for me, and I intend to keep it that way. My newsfeed will not become a place of negativity.
I admire your energy in even bothering to write this blog post, much less contemplating having discussions with anyone on fb. I committed to having and keeping it (after ducking out several times) because I have relatives with whom I could never have a discussion on fb or in person but I do want to be aware of whether or not one of them gets sick and/or dies–and nobody would ever think of sending me a plain vanilla email about it. If I were handing out grades and you were interested in them, I’d give you an A for effort, ma chère, all the way around! Happy continued blogging and fbing!
Paul – I envy your happy Facebook place. Most of the time, it’s a happy place for me, too, but I have to do a lot of hiding & filtering to keep it that way. I think that could be avoided if people just made an effort to be courteous… though I know asking everyone to play nice isn’t always realistic.
Pliers – Sometimes I really miss plain vanilla email just for the one-on-one conversations, but like you, I’ve found Facebook to be a sort of necessity to keep in touch. And it’s great for keeping in touch, even though it can get messy from time to time.
I’m typing this from my phone, whilst sitting on the pot. I could provide an animated GIF to accompany the mental image, but I’m all out of glitter and the computer is on the other side of the wall.
Truth be told, this is why I’ve slowed to a mild crawl when it comes to posting my atheistic views. I suddenly felt like I was being the very thing I was against: proselytizing. I’m not going to convince any to flip the bird at the idea of their magical being in the sky by posting a few tongue-in-cheek overused memes. The same goes for politics, or music for that matter.
However, I still feel that these ideas crave freedom from the chains that bind them to my brain. I feel social media, albeit plenty flawed, is still a solid place to gather a diverse selection of individuals to open up some taboo dialogue. It’s not always the best way, but sometimes it’s the only way to learn in a environment where everyone can’t necessarily make it in person.
I’ve unfriended a few, and been unfriended too. It’s a matter of tolerance within our levels of comfort. Sometimes I like being proven wrong. Other times I find solace knowing my self created reality keeps me comfortable in an otherwise nutty world. And if I can share some differing thoughts with people I’d like to consider friends, then they either need to appreciate it for who I am, or text me a GIF of them taking a shit and be gone with it.
I think one of the things I do like about Facebook is that different groups/pages exist where we can have discussions with like-minded people, as opposed to having public fights with acquaintances. I love the Thinking Atheist page – it’s a bit of sanity injected into my news feed each day… though I refrain from putting similar posts on my own wall simply because I don’t want my dialogues with my friends & family to be about that.
Maybe I’m just too easily exhausted by religious & political debates.
That said, a whimsical, animated GIF of someone taking a shit would be a meme that I could probably get behind.