On my Facebook list of friends are people I went to school with, people I work with, relatives, people I’ve become friends with over the years, and strangers that I’ve met on Facebook that have become genuine friends. I’m always mindful of what I post on Facebook, I hope. There have been things I’ve posted that I later regret. Some I remove and some I just leave and go on about my business. After all I’m only human. One of the things I like about Facebook is the ability to make lists of friends. I have put friends on this list or that one. I have lists for school, work, family, and others.
Sometimes when I post something that only a few of my friends may be interested it, or may even be sort of tasteless or maybe very opinionated I’ll hid my post from a certain list. Its not that I’m trying to hide anything. Its just that I don’t think they will appreciate what I have to say or maybe my opinion leans to far one way or another. When I post something I normally like to interact with my friends. I’m like anyone, I like a good discussion, even an argument every now or then. But I’ve found that some people tend to become sort of rude (in my opinion) and I don’t care for rude.
The bad thing about Facebook is we are reading other people’s thoughts, opinions, and things in their everyday life. We can’t hear their tone of voice or see the expression on their face. For instance when having a political discussion face to face, it seems like, to me anyways, that we are more respectful of each others feelings. On Facebook, its seems we just type type type, click. Then the whole network sees. I say take a minute and reread what we’ve wrote before entering. Sure you can always remove it, but once its out there, its out there.
I was moved to write this because of someone’s daily post on Facebook. They come across, to me anyways, as petty, prejudiced, bossy, and inflexible. Some of the things posted I think are meant to be funny, but in a written form they don’t come across that way to me. I firm believer in every one has a right to their opinion, but to show contempt for another human being because they think, speak, look, believe, or act different from you makes my blood pressure rise.
Another wonderful feature of Facebook is the ability to hide individual people from your feeds. Why not just unfriend them you might ask? I don’t want to hurt their feelings for one thing. For another, I think they probably have a low self-esteem anyway. Finally, I hope one day they change and mature. In the meantime I will just hide them from my feed and hide my posts from them.