Facebook is starting to make me hate my friends.
OK, actually they’re doing that all by themselves. But through no fault of their own, Facebook is helping, giving them a well-designed forum to become insufferable jerks. I get Facebook was conceived to help friends keep in touch with each other. And in most cases it does a fine job of that. I’ve been able to locate people I haven’t talked to or seen in literally decades and send them a short note, give them a “thumbs up” to something new that’s happened in their lives. But it’s also given some friends the opportunity to become the people they never were in real life: Insufferable know-it-alls. Intolerantly opinionated and quick to dismiss the opinions of longtime friends. Basically, they’ve become blowhards. Dare to disagree with them at your own risk or suffer their densely-worded wrath. Their posts are either cryptically short word-darts aimed at the latest social issue, or long screeds that ramble and try to cover every base and are generally posted after 11 p.m. Social issues are the topic on which they seem most confident in flexing their Internet muscles: police brutality, marijuana reform, feminism…some of my friends have apparently become “experts” in these subjects and more. But it’s not just the subject or the length of the posts that has made me start to hate (some) of my friends. It’s the tone of both the original post and the replies to comments. Dismissive. Quite often unnecessarily rude. Pointlessly insulting. They come with an authoritarian tone, the idea that their beliefs are imperious to criticism. They stand in clear, sharp contract to the posts of most of my other friends, which consist of funny anecdotes, updates on their kids (OK, that can get a bit annoying), vacation pics, drinking in various bars, etc. Basically inconsequential stuff. Which is why the unnecessarily arrogant posts are a shock. I know these people in person, some more than others. I’ve never had a similar conversation in person. But behind that Facebook wall, things happen. One person in particular could be described as “meek” in person – never raised his voice, never confronted anyone on an issue during discussion at our writing group, discussions that sometimes veered into subjects other than writing. But on Facebook they become, well, jackasses. Quick to argue, combatative over minor issues, and not at all reluctant to wave whatever minor credentials they may have on an issue over all others. The aforementioned “meek” person recently defriended me apparently because I had the audacity to offer a counterpoint to one of his posts. While I took great pains to avoid making the comment personal – something I always do – he nonetheless took it as such and replied with a comment that accuse me of talking to him as if I were his dad (Calling Dr. Freud) and seguing into a rant about why I was never his “friend” (no we weren’t FRIENDS, but we were definitely friendly to each other). Being defriended, something I never gave a shit about before, was actually a welcome event in that occasion. That same friend also declared that people can’t handle his “truth - which, in actuality, is merely his version of the truth. Another friend, meanwhile, recently concluded that because his innocuous posts about pets and kids, etc., received more “likes” than his posts about a fatal police shooting, it was evidence of a lack of compassion on the big issues on the part of his friends. “Likes” were a scorecard of social justice and he was an electronic Martin Luther King (eKing). Because of them, the remaining friends who take Facebook that seriously I hold at arm’s length, picking and choosing carefully which comments I respond to and what I said when I actually do comment - along the lines of “Well said!” or “You nailed it!” or simply hitting the “Like” button. It’s this quick-to-battle attitude that had made the ads and news posts the only things I really enjoy reading on Facebook these days. I’m probably going to stay on Facebook. Like I said, it’s a good way to stay in touch with friends. But I’ve already begun limiting my comments and interaction, even with friends. I want to continue to “like” them, no matter how difficult they’re making it for me.
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August 2015
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