Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Facebook, Politics, Religion and A Dose of the Truly Bizarre

Okay, so I've tried really hard to ignore the offensive remarks that people put on facebook.  For a while I didn't delete people when they made insulting remarks about Catholicism, or tried to nitpick scripture and use it incorrectly like a weapon (oh that was a fun one... a nasty little remark on my page on the first day I went to the ER), or who made comments implying that anyone who didn't vote for our current President was obviously an ignorant racist (because that's the only possible problem you could have with the man?!?!?!).  In fact, on the days when the comments were directed at me, I tried my level best to be nice when I responded.

And I wondered and wondered and wondered why people put stuff like that on Facebook.

Two days ago, I decided that I had two choices.  I could either go through and make major cuts (again) to my friend's list or I could delete my account.  Since there are a couple groups/pages that I really appreciate, I opted for the friend purge.  I am now out of the triple digits with 96 friends.  If it weren't for the Catholic blogosphere the number would be much lower!  And facebook is less stressful.  There are still a few people who I love (and thus didn't cut) who post that sort of thing who made the cuts... but it will certainly be less frequent (and I changed a few privacy settings so it's less likely to end up on my news feed).

Yet after enduring so many tea party comments I have to say... seeing this video this morning gave me pause and made me wish I had held off one more week before pruning the list.  It's totally against my normal (personal) facebook policy (which actually seems to be changing...) but I would have loved to post this on facebook with a comment about the protests.

As you can tell from the title, it is bizarre.  And offensive.  Just so you're warned:

ht Creative Minority Report

5 comments:

  1. I think there's a big difference between people posting truly offensive comments and ones who simply disagree with the position you're taking. What I find is that some people simply have trouble disagreeing civilly and that the internet seems to encourage that sort of incivility. However, there's at least one person I know who takes disagreement with him as incivility, no matter how politely you phrase it. You can't win with someone like that, but you also can't win with people who act like crude bullies on the internet.

    We don't live in a bubble, we live in a world with all sorts of different people with all sorts of different opinions. We ought to be able to discuss things without resorting to name calling and put downs. The people who persist in bad language, put downs, etc get put on my hide list on FB. I don't defriend them because that would simply feed their paranoia. They don't know they're on my hide feed, and I can check in on them from time to time to see if perhaps they've grown up a bit. However, like you I don't care to have their comments all over my page.

    Hope you're feeling better and that the doctor is able to get to the bottom of things. Glad that Sadie is being so helpful. She's at such a nice age.

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  2. I have found that with the exception of one person, I am so blatant about my beliefs that the people who disagree or worry about offending me unfriend me FIRST, one person likes to argue until you admit that your wrong, but of course the Catholic always wins :) Haha. That is awful that people are making awful comments on your page, I would hate to be surrounded by that.

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  3. The kinds of comments I was thinking of were the name calling and things like "I thank God I'm not Catholic and that Martin Luther freed us from it's tyranny" where I just kind of wonder... okay... so you feel like that... fine... but you know you have Catholic friends.... and is that really appropriate for facebook?

    It's interesting to read articles that are different opinions (I was a communist when I met Paul, LOL!). I just can't stand the one that talk about how stupid conservatives are (because I see a lot of those) or ignorant, or, from one of my best friends, racist. If we could stay away from name calling, it would be so much better.

    I don't reply to those comments... but they were definitely in mind when I pruned my list...

    And I am feeling better! The appointment is on Friday and it'll be such a relief!

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  4. Cam - I'll be happy to friend you on FB.

    I try to stay away from politics in general on FB. But I've hidden the two friends I have on FB who make remarks like that on a constant basis (the other one unfriended me after a blog post I wrote, which I thought was relatively uncontroversal, and had nothing to do with her, though I think she thought it did). So I don't see their junk and I check in on their pages every so often to see whats new.

    I have several other (more than half) liberal friends on FB, but most of them will only get political about once a year or so (though with election season looming it could get worse) and they luckily don't spend the political message dousing the Church.

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  5. Glad to see I made the cut! I am so very glad to be your friend on FB. :-)

    I don't believe the FB is an appropriate forum for political or religious rants. I think it is perfectly fine to make your position clear, but not for petty or snarky remarks. (Then again, FB is often treated like a cyber high school by people...)

    Luckily, I don't get a lot of that on my feed.

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I love comments and I read every single comment that comes in (and I try to respond when the little ones aren't distracting me to the point that it's impossible!). Please show kindness to each other and our family in the comment box. After all, we're all real people on the other side of the screen!