If you don’t use Facebook, and this is why you don’t use Facebook, and you think Facebook is stupid anyway, that’s nice, and maybe you could go find some other thread to discuss that in.
Let’s say that one of your Facebook friends posts bigoted commentary on some topic. Racist, gay rights, anti-Semitic, whatever - something that you find personally offensive towards a group of other people.
Do you ignore it? Do you de-friend the person? Do you publicly challenge them? Or some other option? And does it make a difference if this person is family, a close friend, a distant friend, etc.?
My general policy on Facebook bigotry is to simply instantly defriend the person because I don’t want to see that stuff in my feed. Now I’m wondering whether, from a moral/philosophical standpoint, it wouldn’t be better to leave those people in my friends list and simply publicly challenge them any time they make such commentary, as a way of saying, “hey, your opinions aren’t shared by everybody.” Then again, is it really worth it to make something into a personal crusade like this? Then again again, it kind of sucks and causes drama to defriend someone, especially if they’re a close family friend, so…I don’t know.
For me personally, “just ignore it” isn’t an option, although I’m interested to hear from all perspectives on this. And yes, this is currently relevant to me although I think the amount of detail I’ve provided so far is enough for people to get the gist of the question.
Given how many controversial things there are out there, its pretty much a given any person you know, love, and respect has a viewpoint about something you find absolutely abhorrent (and believe it or not the same likely goes for what other folks would thinkg about you if they knew enough). If you knew enough about everyone you’d likely IMO have to defriend em all, which kinda defeats the purpose.
I think it boils down to just HOW bad this particular “sin” is and how good a person the person is otherwise.
Do you want to be a circle of friends with a population of one? Do you want to make everything in your life a personal crusade against injustice? To me, at most, barring Hitler levels of bad, make your dislike known in a low key way and move on.
A friend from school who went on to be a somewhat successful actor is suddenly using FB more. Yesterday he posted a few somewhat incoherent posts about Jersey Shore, and the final post was something about the Jersey Shore cast being “u niggers!!!” with a link to MTV.com (not an article, just their homepage).
I was really taken aback and ready to just delete him but he’s known for having both drug problems and mental problems, so I gave it a pass.
And I totally wanted to see him flame out.
Anyway the offending post is gone so someone must have helped him out. Or maybe he got hacked, I dunno.
Anyone else that I don’t think is saying stuff because they are mentally disturbed…yeah I would un-friend them. I un-friended a lot of people early on simply on the basis of them having weirdo religious and political views. I’m actually a Christian myself, but I don’t want to hear from the Krazy sort.
My cousin said something uncouth and slightly racist the other day as a comment in our other cousin’s status. A black friend of the second cousin came right in and shot him down. Then I laughed at him as a comment.
Because I don’t want to give even tacit approval to hateful bigotry.
To be clear, I’m not talking about differing political opinions or whatever. Most of that stuff I just let go without commentary. But making racist jokes or expressing that you think gay people are destroying American society or whatever, is a different level for me.
I have no beef with people who do let it pass unremarked on. I just personally can’t bring myself to, although it would probably be easier for me if I could. Blah.
During the '08 presidential election a friend posted some pretty ridiculous “Obama is a Muslim Terrorist” nonsense. If he’d stopped there I would have done nothing, axcept think less of him personally. However, when a mutual called him on it (essentially asking, “cite?”) his response was rude, and maybe even abusive. I dropped him as a friend. I never did tell him why. He never asked.
I don’t think it needs to be a personal crusade, but if someone is making a public post on FB, it’s usually for a reaction.
You can either choose to do so or not, but you wouldn’t be wrong in addressing the issue. I think it’s more a matter of choosing which battles to fight, though, because as I said above, when people do such things in open forum, it’s usually for a reaction-- not because they intend for anything constructive to come of it.
If there is a specific fallout, or it digresses into something more ignorant, then I’d remove them from my friend list (I don’t understand why people take a huge offense to this, especially if they are spouting trash in the first place).
I make no distinction between friends or family, though this extends beyond just social networking, since I have limited use for FB.
I defriend them. It’s just facebook, and this has only happened with extended family whose posts I don’t really care about anyway. If they asked why I defriended them, I’d tell them, but that hasn’t come up yet. Usually they just instantly send me a friend request, which I ignore.
Question: Honestly with no snideness intended, but do y’all just friend anybody who asks, or are all the people on your list actual friends? I deny and ignore the shit out of people on Facebook. I’ve added some family members because they got all butthurt when I didn’t want to “friend” them (we’re friends in real life, idiots), and they often post asinine drivel that I’ve chosen to hide, but everyone else is a friend of mine. People I call on the phone, go to happy hour with, bitch about life to, etc. I don’t have any friends who would write bigoted nonsense, and if they ever did, it would feel like a slap in the face and I would definitely talk to the person about it, and not on Facebook. It would be enormously disappointing to find out someone I’m friends with is a bigot, and would warrant a conversation.
Now let’s just pretend that I friended random dudes from third grade, and had to see their “teh gays are ruining marriage!” crap, I’d post a smart ass remark about how dumb the comment is, and be done with it. If they kept doing it, I’d unfriend them. I am way too impatient to deal with crap like that. So who are you guys friending? Everyone?
I think I’d draw a distinction between hatred/bigotry and differing viewpoints. Yeah, someone out there might find it horrifying that I’m pro-choice, and I would have a hard time understanding the viewpoint of someone who’s pro-life…but that’s a really huge difference between someone being racist, for me.
I think I’d just choose not to be friends with them. I like to think there aren’t so many racist people out there that you’re limiting yourself by not being friends with them. For me, it’s not about being on a personal crusade but the fact that if I knew I was friends with a racist, there’s no way I could have a personal connection with them. Would they be thinking horrible, bigoted thoughts about me, etc.
I have never encountered anyone making *really *bigoted statements. I think I would challenge it, because, well, I don’t like to see bigoted statements go unchallenged.
The London riots led to some quite moronic comments which I didn’t bother challenging; they weren’t strictly bigoted, just misinformed, and I can’t be bothered to argue politics when I don’t think there’s a chance the other person will listen.
When I first joined Facebook I went on a friending spree and added almost everyone on there that I knew from high school. I have since realized that this was an epic, Kevin-Costner-making-Waterworld-level mistake and since defriended the majority of them. People like that, I just defriend without a second thought if they post some offensive thing or aggressively post their cat pictures or whatever.
The person I’m currently having an issue with is my mom’s boyfriend, and defriending him has created a small amount of family drama. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I kind of was, because my feeling is, yo, he’s dating my mom, not me, so if I defriend him, why should he care? But anyway, now there is drama so I’ve been second-guessing myself and thinking, maybe I should have just left him in my friends list and just called him out whenever he posts obnoxious stuff.
Then again, I defriend everyone else who posts this shit, so why should he get a special pass? You see, this is what I’m dealing with.
Thats kinda an important consideration in my mind too. If these are random internet friends that barely exist for you then defriend away. If these are REAL LIFE friends that you also have as friends on the internet, then you have bigger issues than what to or not to do than Facebook.
That is annoying. I justify defriending them by telling myself that any drama over defriending them is going way less of a problem than the drama that will ensue if I finally succumb to the almost overwhelming temptation to troll the living shit out of them. Luckily, my family doesn’t even remember how long I’ve been on facebook (I don’t post), so they don’t even notice that I’ve defriended them. They just notice that I’m popping up as someone they should friend.
I likewise can’t imagine this happening. Back when I friended everyone, there was too much crap on my wall to ever bother reading. And now that I cut it back to actual friends, I can’t imagine a single one of them saying this crap.
If I did see it, I’d respond exactly as I do here. Hiding accomplishes nothing. Unfriending is barely better, as they don’t know why you did it. It is far better to call them out.
Though I admit I’m much more polite everywhere else. I guess I just care more.
Arrgh. I am truly baffled by how many people get their feelings hurt by not wanting to be FB buddies with them. Get over it; it’s just a stupid website. I’m done trying to understand it, and just accept that it is so. People get their knickers in knots if you don’t want to chat with them on a website. But yeah, if it’s causing real life trouble, then perhaps you were better off calling him out, and not in some super serious Moral Crusader way, but just making a comment, then hiding his posts later were they to continue. Of course, hindsight, great vision, all of that. How could you have known this would have caused such a hubbub?
I understand that some people get miffed over it, but I don’t really care if they’re not my friends, and I certainly don’t anticipate them throwing a shit fit over it and causing actual, real life drama.
The closer they are, the more I’m likely to call them out on it. If its a peripheral friend who I only know through someone else, I would simply write a quick response to it. However, I expect more from my closer friends and relatives and if they said anything, I would call out their bullshit immediately
The reason I do that with closer people is because I think expectations for people who only know you through others are a lot different from people you are close to. Who you hang out with reflects on you, so if your family or close friends are bigots, that reflects badly on you. If it someone further away, then you don’t care as much because what they say isn’t as damaging to your own reputation