Thursday, August 30, 2012

I Finally De-Friended Someone On Facebook

I have this awful, maddening habit of waking up at 1:00 am every single night. I think it probably stems from when my daughter was younger and this was a regular time for her to wake up to eat. And now she continues merrily dreaming (probably of stacking progressively higher dangerous objects and jumping off of them with glee, if her daily activities are any indication). But every night, I wake up. Sometimes I can fall back to sleep rather quickly, but more often I'm up for an hour or two. I usually make myself stay in the bed, reasoning that any rest is better than none. But sometimes I give into my busy mind's temptation and check Facebook or my email.

I made that mistake this morning.

Maybe no good can come from 1:00 am Facebook.

Anyway, I scroll down the handful of posts that were new in my feed and see this picture (Warning: I found the following picture really offensive, obviously, so there's a chance you will, too.) I'm sharing it not because I think that it needs more exposure in the cyber world, but because I don't think that ignoring damaging and oppressive ideas makes them go away. When people share offensive and damaging pictures as "jokes," sometimes the only way to talk about them constructively involves spreading them, but to an audience that isn't likely to tolerate that kind of bullying and in a way that demonstrates the problems. It's the same reason that everyone has to repeat Todd Akin's ridiculous statement or Daniel Tosh's horrible rape joke. We don't repeat it because we think it's an idea worth sharing; we repeat it because we're afraid of who might share it if we don't.


And with that, I did my first ever content-related de-friending. 

I'm not telling you that because I'm up on some high horse about how righteous I am in taking a stand through hitting one button online. I'm telling you because I'm actually quite conflicted about it. 

I share most of my blog posts through Facebook, and I would venture to guess that I occasionally step on some toes. I don't pay attention to my friend counts, so I have no idea if people are de-friending me over my "radical feminist" views, but they probably are. 

But I've had a policy of not de-friending people just because I disagree with them. I've seen offensive posts (some from this same person) and have shrugged them off. I've seen problematic posts and written about them, either on this blog or in the comments on the picture itself. And--especially during an election year--I've seen politically-minded posts that are enough to drive a liberal-leaning person like myself up a wall (as I'd imagine my conservative-leaning friends feel about some of my posts). 

But I don't de-friend. I'm a firm believer in not creating echo chambers. I think it's really, really important to hear ideas that are different from your own, if for no other reason than that having to defend (if even just in your own head) your own stance makes your arguments stronger. I have figured out what I believe about the world by testing those beliefs agains things I don't believe. And, often, hearing other ideas has changed my perspective, made me think about something in a new way, and sometimes even changed my mind. I can't do that if I don't see anyone who disagrees with me. 

So maybe I was wrong to de-friend over this picture. And maybe I take myself "too serious." 

But I see people bullied, abused, and disrespected every single day: in real life, in the news, through their own stories. I just can't handle opening up my Facebook feed in the middle of the night and seeing something like this. It has no value in an argumentative sense. It doesn't make me question anything other than my faith in humanity, and it--frankly--just makes me sad. 

Maybe you could say that getting sad is important so that we can stand up to those people and make them question their own decisions. But I only have so many fights in me. 

Have you ever de-friended someone over the content they post? Do you think you made the right decision? Have you been de-friended? Do you think they made the right decision?

18 comments:

  1. You have every right to de-friend someone on Facebook. For some reason, I felt the pressure to keep company online that I never would "in real life." I really had to think - why am I even connected with this person online? To snoop? Because I'm curious about their life? Not saying that this was your situation...but I have definitely unfriended people who have posted things that I found blatantly offensive. To me, it wasn't worth it getting in a Facebook fight and I wouldn't be friends with those people in real life anyways. People with different opinions? Maybe I'll just hide their annoying statuses :) But people who are downright mean, prejudicial, and hateful? I don't need that negativity in my life -- online or not.

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    1. You ask a good question about why we have some people on our lists in the first place. I'm very comfortable using social media to talk to people I really do talk to in real life, family, and people that I network with almost entirely over the internet. But those people who I once knew (especially as a child) can be trickier. I never want to miss the chance to re-connect with someone, but sometimes those connections are never going to happen, and then what are you really using the the online connection for?

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  2. I defriended a friend from grade school because she, a white woman, moved to Arizona and apparently is super hugely racist and kept writing enraged screeds about "those Mexicans" who were "stealing all the jobs" and how every single Mexican ever is a thief and a rapist and every single crime committed in Arizona is because of Mexicans. All of them. Every single one. I and some other people have known her since she was a little kid tried to talk some actual sense into her and she just got more and more offensive. "well, I live here, so I KNOW. They just COME HERE and blah blah blah" Darling girl, a lot of people you call "Mexican" have been living in Arizona since before the state of Arizona existed. Anyway, all her status updates were racist diatribes against Mexicans and occasionally Black people (and OMG she has a daughter who is half Black! WTFFFFF YOUR DAUGHTER IS LISTENING) or shitty "modelling" photos of herself leaning against various garage doors, so I defriended her and then blocked her when she kept posting garbage and personal attacks on my wall. I'm pretty sure some other people defriended her as well. Basically, I don't want someone like that in my life at all, so... it wasn't really a struggle. Will she learn anything from that or change her ways? Of course not. She has plenty of people supporting her views and agreeing with her. But at least I don't have to see her hate anymore.

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    1. "But at least I don't have to see her hate anymore." Yeah. That's my thinking on it, too. People can use their own Facebook accounts however they want. I'm not trying to make some grand statement about how you should or shouldn't censor yourself, but--at the end of the day--the hate wears me out. And I have the right to not have to look at it.

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  3. I've struggled with this, too. While I do try to avoid unfriending people just because I disagree with their politics, I most recently unfriended someone who posted a picture of himself about to shoot a groundhog in a trap. I grew up in the country, I'm not a vegetarian, I understand that certain animals can wreak havoc on crops, and I try to be practical about what my parents called "the facts of farm life." But that being said, the picture seemed unnecessarily cruel, and I've come to think that "unnecessarily cruel" is my breaking point. I'd say the photo your "friend" posted also falls into that camp.

    As for the political side of things. I've basically had to hide or limit the status messages I see from everyone in my family. I found that I was being drawn into far too many rabbit hole arguments, and it resulted in several prolonged silences between me and people I really do love. I hate feeling silenced, but I also had to decide that keeping the family peace was more important to me than sharing my opinion. Ugh.

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    1. That groundhog one would get to me, too.

      As for the politics, that one's so tricky to me. I really value debating politics. My own views on politics have changed greatly by being involved in some good, solid debates. But so many people see a debate as an attack. I don't ever want to make people feel personally attacked, but it gets hard to figure out where those lines are since everyone sees them differently.

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  4. I like your statement that it is necessary to share those offensive "jokes" because they need to be challenged- if we don't spread them in order to say "this is not okay", then someone else might spread them because they're "funny." Disgusting.

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    1. I think that's especially important when we're talking about images and memes that can get passed among thousands of people in a matter of hours. Sometimes we have to stop and pick them apart.

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  5. I de-friend Facebook friends all the time. Personally, I just feel that life is far too short for me to have to wade through racist/sexist/homophobic bullshit on a platform that is supposed to be for me to keep in touch with my friends. I don't de-friend people for having different political views, or for posting about things they are passionate about, but those three things I just mentioned will get someone de-friended in the blink of an eye. If it's someone I know from my childhood, I just assume that we have grown apart to the point that we are not actually "friends" any more, and I would rather have good memories of that person as a child than memories of that racist screed they posted on FB last week.

    I've heard that reasoning before about not wanting to create an echo chamber, and how it's good to have some diversity, and I agree with that. I guess I just feel like I get enough of that in my real life, and people that post things like the image you shared aren't trying to articulate something they feel strongly about, they're just being cruel. That adds nothing to my day.

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  6. I have defriended people, and I've also kept as friends people with whom I disagree.

    For me -- and I'm not suggesting that my line has to be the same line others use -- the line is between folks who write things with which I simply disagree and folks who post things I see as bullying or victimizing others.

    A recent example, the Chick-Fil-A "support day" or whatever at the beginning of August. I disagreed with it. I had a few friends who supported Chik-Fil-A, who went to Chik-Fil-A on that day, and who made a point of updating their Facebook status to reflect that. As a queer person, not only did I disagree with their actions, but I found them personally hurtful. I contacted a few of them privately to let them know my feelings, but I didn't defriend them.

    On the days near it, I also had 2 Facebook friends who not only did all of the things above, but who also posted status updates that were explicitly and purposefully intended to hurt and/or dehumanize gay people. (Trigger warning: As in, making a joke out of "gay" and being "butthurt" in a way that, quite frankly, likened the status poster to a bragging rapist... that is purposeful and ick.) For me, I decided: 1) It was way harder to give them the benefit of the doubt; 2) it was way harder for me to engage; 3) that could be legit triggering for me in some circumstances, so it wasn't safe for my mental health (survivor w/ PTSD) to keep them on my feed.

    And -- bottom line -- it's one thing for me to be friends with people with whom I disagree. But I don't want to be friends with bullies.

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    1. I completely agree and draw my lines in similar ways. I especially agree with your analysis of whether or not you can engage with someone. If someone disagrees with me--even over an issue that I find very personal and have an emotional response to (maybe even ESPECIALLY in those cases)--I'm willing to engage and share my point of view and hear theirs. Maybe one or both of us will learn something. But when it comes to intentionally abusing and bullying, I feel less hopeful about a discussion going anywhere positive, and I feel less energy to even start that conversation in the first place.

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  7. I deleted a friend who turned out to be a victim blaming rape apologist. She also would go on and on about Chick Filet day and how gays were oppressing her by existing. She turned out to be a completely different person from who I knew in HS.

    When I deleted her she called me a traitor that chose liberalism over a long friendship.....yeah as if it is wrong to end a friendship on account of you are an asshole.

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  8. I just found your FB page via The Feminist Breeder today, so I've been reading random posts with interesting titles. Which is how I landed here. :-)

    I've de-friended people for a variety of reasons. My FB page is 100% personal, so a couple-few years ago I nixed everyone who was just on my friend list because we knew the same people. If we never hung out together, never talked, never even commented on each other's posts, then I dropped them. There were no complaints.

    Then I realized that the few mega-conservative acquaintances were literally raising my blood pressure and stressing me out with their anti-science, anti-woman, anti-gay, etc. posts. (It didn't help that I was having a very difficult pregnancy at the time.) I decided that I didn't need that in my personal space, and that if I felt like seeing what "the other side" was up to, I could go check that out without having it all up in my space. There were still no complaints, but one person did ask if it was something she had done. She was a nice lady, so I 'splained that it was nothing personal and that I was just trying to keep my stress levels down. She said she understood and wished me well.

    I decided to stick with that low stress policy for FB friends. The world is stressful enough without feeling like I'm going into combat every time I log in. :-)

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    1. Thanks for reading! I completely agree that dealing with people online can be stressful and that we need to practice self care when we're choosing how to handle that. I like a little stress, but I have to learn how to set some practical limits around what I'll engage with. I'm sorry to hear you had a difficult pregnancy, and I hope it improved! Even a not-difficult pregnancy made me so stressed that it was harder to deal with people, so I can only imagine how that made you feel.

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  9. Did you get the picture because she posted it, or did you receive it in your news feed because she 'liked' it? I used to use 'like' as a kind of bookmark to posts i wanted to find again, rather than as a signal of approval. That stopped when I learned that facebook was feeding my 'likes' to others, under my own name.

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  10. That's a good distinction. I've run into a similar problem when I have "pinned" things to a "Problematic Visual Media" message board. Obviously, I'm pinning it because I have a problem with it, not to spread it.

    In this case, though, the user had definitely posted it to share it because it was funny, and it wasn't the first time he'd shared this kind of stuff. Both the posts and the comments that people would put on them later were disturbing and completely cruel. It was just too much hate for me to have to look at all the time.

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  11. Decision (3) males perfect sense. Decision (2) follows from (3). But decision (1)?

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  12. Thank you Michelle. My biggest qualifier for maintaining and/or investing in a friendship relationship is this: is the person rational?

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