Can I say ‘dick’ in IMHO? Anyway, here’s the gist; I have a (fairly distant) friend on Facebook who plasters my news feed with generic Christian slogans and whatnot, ‘Jesus saves’ and suchlike.
This might just be me, but I have to stick my fist in my mouth not to ask her about it (even politely, even justifiably, even within the context of Christianity itself) because it seems like I’d come across as a colossal jackass.
Of course, I could just ‘hide’ her, although this seems even more jerkass-esque to me, I’d hate for anyone to ‘hide’ me because they disagreed with something I’d posted. I’d rather them take me to task. Plus I’d miss any non-evangelical stuff.
Should I just keep my e-mouth shut in silent frustration, hide or actually comment?
My rule of thumb: If it’s relatively inoffensive witnessing or the typical religious frippery (“Job interview today! Pray for me!”), I’ll either ignore it or hide them, depending on how frequently they post and how annoying they are.
If it’s political BS, and I feel like responding, I’ll comment with a level of decorum that’s somewhere north of the Pit and somewhere south of GD.
Most of these people are folks from high school that I’ve never had much contact with during or since. I had a mostly deserved reputation as a smoking, drinking, doping, screwing, joke-cracking delinquent, and other than the slight veneer of respectability brought by a professional career and far fewer drugs, I haven’t changed much in my outlook, as a glance at my Wall will attest.
Those people knew me then, and still felt compelled to pseudo-reconnect with me ten years later. As long as they don’t get all up my ass about how I live my life, I’m not going to give them any shit about how they choose to live theirs.
I have a similar rule. If it’s just random “I love Jesus and Jesus loves me!” noise then I ignore it. They probably think plenty of stuff that I post is worthless as well.
But if it’s hostile haranguing, I hide them. I used to argue with them, but I decided that I’m not going to argue on Facebook anymore. I want to get updates on the activities of my friends, and if someone is regularly posting stuff that pisses me off I’d rather not see it.
I would just Hide her. She’ll never know so I don’t see how it’s being a jerk. Just don’t tell her about it. And I doubt you’ll miss her non-Christian posts, if you’re this annoyed by her ‘Jesus saved’ stuff then I can’t imagine you’re that fond of her.
I’ve hid 2 people so far, one kept posting daily links to her blog, the other posted a string of political stuff that I found to be annoying simplistic and narrow-minded. I can’t imagine what would be accomplished by telling them that their wall posts annoyed me. It would just piss them off and cut off any friendly contact in the future (ex: to track down a mutual friend) which is why I accepted the friend request in the first place.
I have a few people who post religious stuff on occasion, but mostly it’s just like stuff they did with their church, stuff they did with the family and such.
When someone hides you does this mean it also hides your wall posts from them? Because I have noticed that some people who I used to see the wall posts from, I don’t see their wall posts anymore.
I have hidden one person for being too chatty on her wall (like 10 updates a day - most people are like 4 updates a week) and she still comments on my wall so no, hiding someone doesn’t keep them from seeing your wall.
I have de-friended three people for being overly religious + overly right-wing. They weren’t good friends at all, just acquaintances from high school. I didn’t mind the religious stuff but “Obama is the devil” was too much for me. I didn’t want to read it and didn’t want to respond to it, so I just got rid of them. So far, no one has noticed or cared.
Only you can know how much this will get to you in the long run. I had a long-time old friend (by ‘‘long time’’ I mean we’ve known each other since we were ten) on my Facebook who became some kind of religious freak and plastered political ‘‘Obama is Teh Devil’’ bullshit all over her Wall. I let it slide until she started bashing gays, at which point I spoke up, and again when she made some ‘‘call to arms’’ civil war-like post, during which her husband got pissed off at me. I hid her for a while, and had almost learned my lesson.
Several weeks later she made a post about how agnostics (who she defined as, ‘‘people who believe there’s a God but don’t care’’) are incapable of love or goodness, followed by an anti-science rant. I wrote two respectful paragraphs of rebuttal and then removed her from my friend’s list. I really should have done that to begin with.
Only you can determine how much this person is worth to you and how much shit you’re willing to put up with.
Thanks for the feedback, fellas. It’s not that I don’t like this person - she’s a perfectly nice person. Which might be ironically part of the problem, I think she sees Facebook as an avenue for easy evangelicalism, since according to her theology if I don’t accept Jesus as saviour then I burn in hellfire forever. So, she thinks she’s doing everybody a favour.
She’s more the ‘happy-clappy’ brand of Christian, if she was posting ‘Obama = the devil’ I’d defriend her quick fast as an absolute lunatic.
I think judging by the comments so far I’m probably best to go with the hide option. Every post of hers makes me want to fire off a salvo of questioning, but she’s not really interfering with my life in anyway (other than hoping I accept her statements as fact, she doesn’t post this stuff on my wall, but uses her status updates for this, which means it comes up on my news feed), so I don’t think that commenting would help at all.
I have this dilemma with a couple of FB friends. I want to remain in touch with them and sometimes they post updates, photos and links that I like to see, but they also post a lot of glurge.
It’s fine when it’s an application you can block without blocking the person, but not so when its via status updates or links. For example, one of them posted some very graphic anti-abortion stuff which made me angry but I had to resist commenting on it. The funny thing is that IRL you would not know she was such a fanatic.
I do feel some resentment because I make a point of not using Facebook to pontificate about things I feel strongly about, precisely because there are lots of people in my friends list who will take offence. Facebook is for keeping in touch with people and sharing interesting (mainly non-controversial) information, not creating conflicts as far as I am concerned. We have message boards for that kind of thing.
I agree with you Martha, to me, Facebook is like a dinner party - topics not to be discussed other than very superficially are religion, politics and your sex life. i.e. its ok to say “Spent Saturday setting up the Church fundraiser - it went great” or even “Reminder to my friends who want to support Living Waters Church - the fundraiser is Saturday.” But actual political or religious witnessing…
Some of my friends politically witness on Facebook, with close friends they are close enough that I don’t mind…but I’ve hidden a few folks who seem to primarily use facebook to convince me they are right.
I also have a rule: Don’t get into pissing matches on Facebook.
I can’t imagine what reason you could have for not hiding this person. If they are putting it up on their own wall, I wouldn’t dream of picking a fight.
I also agree that facebook is not for religious, political, or sex discussion. It’s not suited to that, the format doesn’t work, just keep it light. (Whining is also not good.)
I’ve only hidden one person so far, and it’s because he was taking quizzes on sex stuff and publishing it on the news feed. Ick ick ick. ICK!!!
In a similar case, I used the function that blocks their news feed (I guess that’s the “hide” function everyone mentions in this thread). Then once in awhile, I would go by her Facebook page where I could scroll past all the glurge and pause only at the real content.
Although I have since de-listed the person altogether because she seems to have nothing relevent to say other than glurgey-glurgey-glurgey-glurge.
I also use the hide function for people to play the games just way too much and fill my new feed with game stuff. I don’t give a rat’s ass if you are a Grand Poobah who iced a zombie in Vampire Wars.
I use the hide function primarily for people whose status updates just aren’t all that interesting - I’m not on the computer much - I have a life y’know - so don’t have that much time to read all the updates. Of my 100 or so friends, only about 15-20 I have on my news feed. (Case in point, one was the class clown and most popular kid in school when we were in elementary. Seems things never change, he has a lot of FB friends and his wall posts are among the most entertaining of all of them that I haven’t hidden.)
I don’t like the games that automatically post this whether you’re wanting them to or not. I’m ashamed to admit it, but most of my time on FB is spent playing games (poker and Scrabble, primarily). I know the wall on my own page is filled with updates from the game (ie “dhkendall just got a three of a kind in Poker!”), and am worried that it’s flooding my friends’ news feeds as well, having them “hide” me (not like I post a status update often, but when I do, it’s for a reason) - I agree, I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass either, and I jsut play it for entertainment, not to let everyone else know (besides, as you all know, three of a kind is nothing, let my friends know when I get a million dollar pot, in real money, with a royal flush, will ya? )
You can hide games, too, though. I have gotten rid of all Mafia Wars, Farmtown, etc. and you can still see your friends’ actual news without wading through the game junk.
I unfriended (word of the year) someone who was religious – it’s not for me, but I understand the attraction and can tolerate it – for questioning whether Islam was a “valid religion.” If an atheist can tolerate a Christian, a Christian should tolerate a Muslim. A Scientologist? That’s a debate.
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