Just realized tonight that a good friend of mine from high school 20+ years ago, I hadn’t “seen much from him” on Facebook in a while, and when I dialed him up on there, I noticed the “Add Friend?” button now on his page (best I can remember, we had “added” each other as Friends, about 6 - 7 years ago).
I post very little on my own page (mainly because I don’t have a lot really going on in my life that’d be of interest to anyone else, quite frankly). I don’t ever post the ridiculous anti-Hillary or anti-Trump memes, and have never posted anything remotely political as a “status update”.
The only thing I can think of, in terms of my interaction with this friend of mine, is him “seeing” me commenting on something political-related (which I hate how Facebook continues to make public the “Win Place Show commented on so-and-so story”.
Whether it was on a “Media Matters”, “Raw Story”, or “CNN” group-page, I’m sure it had something to do with what a dipshit I think Trump (and his spokesperson minions) are, or what a hate-group I think Fox News is, and how I’ll be more than happy to vote for Hillary (more or less, as the “lesser of two evils”).
I’m not really looking for a “Hillary vs Trump” debate - plenty of threads for that - just wondering if ‘you’ have had it come to the point where you would delete someone (or have them “delete” you - maybe old-old friends, family members, etc), simply because you’re on opposite sides of an insane political season?
No. My FB friends are mostly Right Wing. I have a few friends on my side (left), and we all, (both sides) enjoy talking shit to each other. So, IDK, maybe we are an outlier.
I haven’t lost any but I wish I could sometimes. Lots of stupid coming from both sides. There is only one proper response to Donald Trump: “Hell no!” and only one proper response to Hillary Clinton: “sigh, fine.”
Had one. I’ve mentioned it before. Reasonable conservative Christian who got caught up with Trump and being anti-Muslim. It was really weird. Went from saying that we should respect Obergefell and hating on the Duggers, standing up against the zealots who would say otherwise, to talking about how evil Islam is.
Last I saw her, she was complaining about how people were unadding her for supporting Trump. And how you should be willing to have differing views. Thought she unadded me for arguing with her about supporting Trump after that post, so I’m not sure how true that was.
Though I had told her that I think it’s okay to declare Facebook a politics-free zone. Which is what I had done to everyone except her, because of the aforementioned reasonableness. Only non-mouth-foaming person I’d seen say political things on Facebook.
Lost a nephew, he’s 43 and threw a temper tantrum because I said I won’t vote for Trump. He told me people who won’t vote for Trump are immature and then he defriended me. The irony of it all.
I haven’t removed anyone from my friends list, but I have “unfollowed” several people who have revealed themselves to be bigots, or conspiracy theorists who swear Hillary Clinton is going take all our guns and force us all to get gay married like Obama did!
My thinking is that I still love them as friends, and would like to send them an occasional message, or post “Happy Birthday” on their timeline, but I’d rather not be exposed to their rantings and stupid memes every day.
I’m probably the most liberal person in my family/friends circle.
I still have my ex-wife and her family on my friends list. She’s a religious liberal. My main adversary is her uncle, who is a Christian minister. In Alabama. South Alabama. Deep south Alabama. One of those people I debate almost daily. Neither one of us will unfriend the other, no matter how contentious it becomes, because that’s admitting defeat.
I like how I can click “hide all posts coming via XYZ page”. That way I don’t have to unfriend someone but I’m free of not having to see something they shared via “We love Trump”, “Let’s all wait for Jesus”, “Pharma is Satan”, “All women are whores and pigs”, as examples of pages I hate. And I sometimes use the feature “report this post”, although Facebook rarely seems to find it objectionable, even if I’m reporting porn. WTF Facebook???
That said, I did unfriend someone a couple of years back because the bulk of his posts went from talking about UK music of the 1980s to “Obama is a Muslim and eeeeviiil (or stupid)”. It was not just the content that bothered me, but the shift in mostly trivial stuff to charged, racist political posts. Good riddance.
I have found a couple of people (including former classmates) who I thought as yes, a bit conservative but overall level-headed, have started to post stuff that makes me wonder… If I can, I put them in the limited profile group, and I do the hiding of posts as mentioned above. But man sometimes I’m still disappointed.
I’ve had probably three people unfriend me over the past few years, and it was only this year that I really started making political posts on a semi-regular basis, mainly during the convention season.
One high school friend unfriended me back in 2012 right after the Obama victory. I had hardly posted anything political at all up to that point and had actually been away from FB for a while. But I had grown really tired of having my feed littered with right wing conspiracy theories and the like (my oldest friends are right wing). I’d even had one or two people say things like “If Obama wins, I’m leaving the country!!!” with tens and maybe even hundreds of likes. I was also going to basically let it go on election night as well, but several people were just effing nasty, bordering on the racial, saying things really outrageous things. So I finally got a bit of wise-ass in me and posted a picture of Obama in a moment of repose with what appeared to be him giving the finger and smiling. My aunt-in-law responded with fury “WE’LL SEE HOW YOU FEEL WHEN YOU AND ALL OF US HAVE OUR FREEDOM TAKEN FROM US!!!” Trust me, Red State America was in full meltdown mode in November of 2012. I lost a friend over that.
Fast forward to this year, I lost two more friends, mostly very old acquaintances whom I really don’t care that much for. Nothing really against them but I am not missing them or anything. They just couldn’t take seeing a few of my convention rants, which is fine. It’s not like we posted or sent messages to each other regularly anyway. Most of my friends and family are right wing. One of them is an elected official (GOP) and another is a senior staffer for another GOP official. Yet another is a former lobbyist for conservative causes. Ironically there don’t seem to be any hard feelings there. I guess they know politics is politics.
I’ve been slowly deleting people over the last couple of years. I’m happy with my actions. How much nonsense I’m willing to put up with depends on the past relationship with the person. If it’s my wife’s coworkers? They’re gone immediately. Someone I went to war with? Eh…it’ll take a while, but it can happen.
My Facebook isn’t an echo chamber. There are people there who I disagree with vehemently, but I still respect them.
There’s a different between, “What happened with Brown is a tragedy. Unfortunately we’ll never know the true story, but hopefully we can take this time to open a much needed dialogue and start the healing process” and “that ni…, I mean thug, deserved what was coming to him! Maybe if he had some family values and his family wasn’t on welfare then the Wilson, the true hero, wouldn’t have had to kill him. Anyone protesting right now should be charged with domestic terrorism.”
Yes, I lost a friend over Bernie Sanders. I despise Sanders and that came through loud and clear on my Facebook during the primaries. It wasn’t too much of a loss, we’d just meet up for a drink about once a year when he was in the city
Funny aside: the only person who ever defriended me for a disagreement was over whether TMZ was a reliable source of news. She was actually a professional journalist and didn’t like the aspersions I was casting on entertainment journalists.
In 2008, I had no problem posting political stuff. By 2012, I was toning it down. Now today, I bite my tongue (fingers?) and keep my wall politics free. That’s not to say I don’t Like political pages, I just don’t share or post things of a political nature anymore.
I wish my wife’s brother and cousins would do the same. Her cousins are largely knuckle-dragging bigots wrapped up in the America flag and an ammo belt. I’ve blocked them from my feed. Her brother is more intelligent, but a hardcore conservative that likes to troll his more liberal friends and family.
Back in 2012, I think I may have had a elementary school friend unfriend me due to my support of Obama. She’s still friends with everyone else we went to elementary school with, but I got the boot. And by 2012 I wasn’t even doing much political stuff on fb anymore, so she must’ve been a real hardcore Romney gal.
Not from anything I’ve personally posted because I rarely post politics. (Whose mind are you going to change anyway?) One person did, however, quit Facebook entirely, partly because the election season was causing him anxiety issues. He gave out his cell number before he quit but he wasn’t close enough of a friend for me to text him.
I have as well, but thankfully it’s been only one person out of my 100+ friends.
I unfriended someone when she started posting a stream of moronic immigration memes and the like. No great loss and she probably didn’t even notice; she was just some random person I went to high school with decades ago and didn’t even talk to back then.
I’ve actually had more debate with Sanders supporters though nothing that’s ended with a de-friending and that stuff has mainly settled down since the convention.
This is what I do. When I first got back on Facebook, I found that feature, and realized it would be so much better to cut that crap off at source. So, I did a whole lot of that and the ‘unfollow’ thing. I’m not on there much, but it’s been a lifesaver when I am. And I can go about my way pretending that half the damn world hasn’t lost their minds and protect my blood pressure. Win win.