To be clear here, are we talking about the middle column of stuff that people use to update their status, or whatnot?
What I see are dogs, babies, jokes, mundane personal updates, and one mention of the NRA interested in helping to find a solution to reducing gun violence.
To be honest, I’ve never seen any stupid political comments, and I’ve never witnessed any arguments or conflicts. My Facebook is filled with fluffy personal stuff. I don’t know how many friends I have; maybe 30 or 40 with mostly Canadians and a handful of Scottish relatives.
Is Facebook a wall of political controversy for most people? Am I reading this right?
I don’t do Facebook but I have to ask: If the lefties were posting similar comments on that side of the spectrum, are you saying that you wouldn’t be bothered by it because you AGREE with them? Not to be rude, but isn’t diversity of thought and opinion considered a virtue on the left?
This is my approach. I love to add a well reasoned argument point out an untruth. Especially to the (to me) mindless ‘Shares’ and ‘Likes’. If a FB friend takes the time to post their option directly, I respond politely and with thanks for their opinion - and then attempt to change their mind.
i didn’t defriend someone, i just hid all posts. it was sad, - a relative who is a FLAMING LEFT WING zealot posted bullshit every 5 minutes and spammed my page so i just hid her. thankfully i have never met her and never will.
I have this problem as well. I’m pretty much the only leftie in a large family of righties. I abstain from posting any political things on my wall, but they’re constantly posting it on their own. Most of the time, I just ignore it. But every now and then, I’ll see something that’s so blatantly wrong (the White House calling it a Holiday Tree, Obama being pro-third trimester abortions), I just can’t ignore it. I used to comment on these things, linking to proof to to contrary or giving my own opinion on the matter. Every.Single.Time. they got pissed at me. Why do I have to be such a know it all? Why do I always have to put in my two cents? They didn’t post that to get people’s opinions, they posted it to show their own. My brother especially got really mad at me over this. When I said he really can’t get mad since he posted it where everyone else can see/comment, he got really angry and said he could. That it was his wall and that if he wanted feedback, he’d ask for it. So now…I just hide the offending posts. I hate it, cause I’m sure if I posted anything pro-choice or pro-Obama or even about marriage equality, I’d get de-friended in an instant.
So I guess my advice is to just, ignore it. Delete the offending posts so you don’t have to see them in your feed and if the person goes crazy with those things, just hide all their posts.
It’s not that I get the cites, it’s that they drop me as friends. You really only have to ask a conservative who thinks Obama is a socialist to define socialism once before you never hear from them again. No one who watches Fox News is interested in having to defend their point of view.
Here I thought you were being coy about your Facebook naiveté… you do realize that what you see on Facebook can vary quite a bit depending on who you’re Friends with, right? It isn’t a broadcast.
I can’t answer for the OP, but the only political ranter who’s feed I ever blocked was a Democrat like me. I just don’t like reading that crap on facebook, and I don’t like the arguments. I think of facebook as a friendly dinner party-type atmosphere; no politics, no religion. It’s not a freaking debate club. There are plenty of places online to do that. Thankfully, most of my friends agree, and the ones who don’t get de-friended or hidden.
I take Dangerosa’s view - difference of opinion? Fine. Outright stupidity + difference of opinion? Not so fine. Yesterday an old high school acquaintance posted a big pro-gun political rant supported by a video of Ted Nugent. Now I’m actually pretty neutral on gun control, but Ted Nugent? That pretty much tells me all I need to know. Defriended immediately.
I used to post about a lot of political stuff on Facebook running up to the election. I went to school at two very liberal universities so most of my friends are hard-left liberals. But my husband’s relatives and kids I went to high school with are quite conservative. Some of them bitch about liberals occasionally, and others bitch about liberals all the time. I got into a lot of arguments and it stressed me out. So, I stopped posting about political stuff. And, I started defriending people who were always looking to stand on a soapbox. And, I learned to walk away any time I saw something that pissed me off before I even got to respond.
I have a number of fb friends who have political opinions way different than mine, but I’ve only defriended one. Unlike the others, she never responded to anything I said to her. She would just post inflammatory videos or pictures, and leave. (The last straw was a vid by an asshole who called for deporting immigrants - not illegal immigrants mind you, but… immigrants. If you post that and don’t respond to comments, you’re not worth my time.)
If I can interact with someone I disagree with, there’s a chance something good may come out of it. If all they do is try to outrage everyone that disagrees with them, I don’t see what’s to be gained in hearing from them.
Good question – and I wrote that in the OP for full disclosure because I find myself just not all that offended by left-leaning statements. I have tried to avoid a political slant (I have not been an member of either party for some time), but I find myself more often – okay, MUCH more often – agreeing with the left. I agree with with you in principle about the diversity of thought/opinion, but it’s the way these posts present such a ridiculously slanted truth and always provided with a dollop of nastiness that bugs me. Of course, this is from my POV – so when I say it’s nasty or slanted, that is, of course, how I percieve it. In other words, have I already been persuaded in one directions by what you would might call the liberal media? I say “no, I don’t think so,” but maybe that’s because I have already been “brainwashed.” (More full disclosure: my primary source of news is SDMB!)
My first reaction (well, it used to be) when I would see one of these posts is about what you inqure about: “Whatever. It’s your right to post what you want,” etc. But I’ve just lost patience with the barrage. And if you were on FB, you’d know that it’s a barrage.
If it helps, the FB post that created the tipping point that lead me to start this thread was a political cartoon of four monkeys: the first three – named ABC, NBC & CBS – were identified as See No Truth, Hear No Truth, Speak No Truth. The fourth was a monkey turned around backwards named MSNBC and the caption read “Absolutely Ignore the Truth.” And it just set me off and I replayed it in my pea brain for the next 30 minutes while I was making my son’s lunch. I’m just like, "Are you f***ing kidding me? You leaving out a certain network by any chance? There should be a fifth monkey with its head up its ass, if you know what I mean. And really, that shouldn’t even have been considered that bothersome of a cartoon. It. Just. Really. Bugged me.
Politics isn’t something I normally talk about with friends, more something to argue about with acquaintances.
I do have one person on facebook, she’s a cousin, who fits the OP description. She’s a bit of a manic lefty/save the world etc who gets herself extremely wound up on issues and spews forth copious facebook posts bagging people she disagrees with.
She has been known to hunt down people on twitter or facebook just to start fights with them
I just ignore most of it, read the bits I find interesting and sometimes depending how much I disagree or how drunk I am I’ll find something worthy of commenting on. That usually starts a shitfight with her lefty friends but meh.
The derps I tend to delete off Facebook or take their posts out of my feed are the ones who continually put up crap about how bored/tired/hungry/thirsty/horny and looking for attention. Make it interesting or funny or GTFO.
My bottom line is if that’s all they ever post about, then I defriend and don’t look back. Posting political opinions is fine, even if I disagree with them, but posting nothing but found political memes is just annoying. With one friend I tried just blocking her, but she still showed up in the drop down thingie so her BS was still there and still pissing me off so she had to go. I don’t have any FB friends that I’d hesitate to spend actual face to face time with, and I can’t imagine having lunch with a wackadoodle wingnut.
I’ve had to hide all the Farmville and other games. I’m not into them, and they fill up my feed otherwise. A few friends post nothing but politics, which I find tiresome, so I’ve hidden them. I’ve left up the anti-vaxxer and the guy who posts about his college sports teams without naming them, like those of us across the country are supposed to just know who he’s referring to, because they’re a sort of enjoyable irritation. I never go so far as to unfriend people, because then they would miss out on my wit.
