A few days ago, I was reading FB posts and happened to see someone had told one of my friends they had defriended her mother. She went on to say that while she loved this person's mother, she could no longer abide reading her political posts. This turned into a long fight between various friends and in the end, I'm guessing more people got defriended. And thus is the state of political discourse in our country.
Although Facebook has been around for a while now, it has gained tons of new users in the last four years. This means that for many, many people, this will be their first election where they are around all the various and intense opinions of everyone else. It means that the old high school chum who posts cute pictures of their kid is now posting memes demonizing one of the candidates. It means your cousin that you used to spend the summer with is now writing long posts about how the country will go to hell if X person is elected instead of Y person. It means that the people who respond to all those requests for crap from your timesuck Facebook games will now spend their time talking about how half of the country is being fooled by the media because they don't watch the media they do.
What can be done about this?
It would be great to just ignore it, but that is becoming increasingly difficult. Every day, more and more people are adding to the venom, in some cases just because they've seen so many political posts by this point they just can't help themselves. We really can't just start posting about how much the political stuff annoys us, because that will not make anyone stop. They'll just start complaining about freedom of speech and how it's their Facebook and they can post what they like. And this is true. They can post what they like and have total right to do so. It is also true they have freedom of speech.
There is always an interesting little catch to the freedom of speech thing though. Just because you have the right to say whatever you want doesn't mean I have to listen. I have the right to ignore you.
In fact, Lifehacker recently wrote an article about how to do just that. I installed this and, while it's not perfect, it does save me from the majority of the political stuff. You have to keep adding words though, because sometimes people think they are being cleaver by not saying a candidate's name. You know how it goes. "Our country is so messed up because SOMEONE thought they could run it but SOMEONE was seriously mistaken." Yeah, that stuff. With a little tweaking though, you eventually get to where most of the political stuff is gone.
Facebook itself also has a Hide Post option. Now, I don't just use this for political stuff. Any time someone posts a picture of a hurt animal or something I find disturbing or offensive, I'll hide the post. That way I don't have to see it over and over again as I'm scrolling down my wall to look for that one game request I missed or a video I didn't get to in time. I usually don't like Facebook 'improvements,' but the Hide Post option is one of their bests. I'm very glad that happened.
Now, if you are reading this article and you are someone who does post a lot of political stuff, before you get all offended that I'm telling people how to ignore you and your message, I want you to take a step back and consider what I'm really saying here. I'm not saying that your opinion isn't valid. I'm not saying your political party is horrible.
What I am saying is that you are failing to effectively communicate your political views because you are getting the hell on everyone's nerves.
My guess is that isn't your intention (unless you are like SOMEONE I know who seems to take delighted bemusement in offending people politically, but I consider his goal here to be some kind of morbid performance art). My guess is that you truly want people to listen to your message. If that is the case, there are some things you can try to do that can perhaps make your communication more effective. In fact, I'll be posting about them tomorrow night. Until then, please answer my Chefville request.
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