I walk my dog every morning. I guess it would be more accurate to say that my dog walks me. Just about every morning, we pass a woman walking her small dog. That dog goes crazy when we walk by and creates this shrill, fingernails-on-the-chalkboard sound that makes my skin crawl. And, it does this every single day. Imagine the most obnoxious, yapping little dog you can think of and multiply it by 10. Got it? Good. Now keep that image in mind because we’re going to refer to it in a bit.
I’ve written 101 (this will be my 102nd) articles on my blog. I try to write one a day, six days a week and have been doing so for several months. Since I started writing, I have lost two “friends” on Facebook (I consider them to be “acquaintances” instead of “friends”). Let’s call them “Bob” and “Tom. Both Bob and Tom hold extremely Liberal political views and they both spew the most hateful and bitter things on their Facebook pages. It got to the point where, whenever I would see one of their posts, I would feel like I do when I walk past that yappy little dog.
“Bob” unfriended me back in August. I think he finally figured out that I was using his posts as examples of the worst type of behavior. Several of my articles contained his direct quotes. I noticed that I hadn’t seen any of his posts for a while and when I went to check, he was no longer on my “friends” list.
“Tom” unfriended me a couple of weeks ago. He had made another one of his comments about the “mango moron” and I got tired of it. So, I commented with a link to my article on Trump Haters. I must have hit too close to home because the next day, his posts were no longer showing up in my feed and I found he had unfriended me.
Honestly? Facebook is much more fun now that Bob and Tom have unfriended me. I still have plenty of Liberal friends I continue to spar with but none of them are posting the same several-times-a-day hate-filled posts. While I won’t go so far as to say that Facebook brings me joy, not having Bob and Tom around is certainly less irritating.
I realize that I could have simply unfriended them. But, I don’t like to unfriend anyone. Remember the saying “keep your friends close and your enemies closer”? Yeah, it’s a little like that. I don’t consider anyone to be an actual enemy, some people just think differently than I do, and that includes most Liberals. I think it’s important to hear thoughts and ideas from all different types of people. It allows me to continuously modify my own viewpoint as I get more data.
I didn’t particularly enjoy the experience, but I stayed connected with them because I felt there might be something to learn from listening to what they had to say. Looking back, I realize that there was nothing for me to gain by remaining “friends”. They kept repeating the same hate-filled message with every single post. Since their message was always the same, I had learned all I was going to learn from them a long time ago. They added no value to my life and I’m glad they’re no longer in it.
Just because you disagree with something doesn’t mean that you have to be nasty about it. And, just because you’re only connected with someone online, doesn’t mean that you should treat them differently than you would in real life.
I expect my friends to treat me better than I expect to be treated by mere acquaintances. However, Facebook doesn’t give us a way to differentiate between “friends” and “acquaintances”. So, as long as we continue to be “friends”, I expect you to at least try not to act unfriendly.
