My tolerance level is higher, obviously, because what they’re saying doesn’t piss me off. I only get pissed off when I disagree with someone.* That makes sense.
That said, I did defriend one guy because he was too left-radical even for me. It wasn’t the radical-ness so much as the anger and cynicism. Every step of progress toward his cause was never good enough. He was a very angry young man. A lot of my lefty friends are posting pro gun-control shit constantly and it’s getting on my nerves. What bothers me the most about it, really, is that people make these pictures/statements like they’re saying something profound or like it’s somehow the final statement on the matter. These are very complex issues and it irks me that people think they can be boiled down into a single sentence or a single solution. A single statistic, assuming it’s even true, is not a coherent argument.
*I’m not saying i get pissed off every time I disagree with someone. I’m saying given two equally inflammatory statements, one being from my POV and the other from a differing POV, the one with the differing POV is going to piss me off, whereas the one from my POV will usually only make me roll my eyes.
I actually agreed with something my aunt reposted from The Tea Party’s page… and I actually liked it and commented that I couldn’t believe I actually liked something that the Tea Party posted.
For me, it’s not so much that I disagree with a political statement (although that’s part of it), it’s when the person just spews factually incorrect right wing nonsense: the kind of crap you can tell they’re just repeating from Fox. I just call them on statements that are factually incorrect and ask them to provide sources for their more outrageous claims. That’s usually enough for them to drop me as a ‘friend.’
Dead on. If someone keeps shitting on my FB posts, they get defriended. If they merely post consistently stupid stuff, their posts get hidden. To date, I have never regretted a single defriending.
One FB friend – a producer who’s child went to preschool with mine – wouldn’t be considered a wingnut based on his depth, but would be based on his breadth (i.e. how often he posts) I fild mildly annoying. Another – a fraternity brother/roommate we nicknamed Stoner Dave and is now a preschool teacher – has been posting pretty rabidly since the Newtown massacre and he doesn’t bother me at all. I wouldn’t quite call him a left wingnut, but then, it gets tricky based my own point of view.
I don’t mind anyone’s politics on personal level and while a lot of my Facebook friends post political memes, none of them are assholes about it. I’d personally just ignore their objectionable posts (if you want to delete them from your feed, fine, but only if you aren’t interested in their non-political statuses or whatnot).
I thank you for the full disclosure and intelligent discussion here. I lean toward the right on most (not all) issues and I feel the same way that you described when I see the slanted one-sided presentations that I see regularly in “Doonesbury” and many Hollywood movies and so-called documentaries, and YES what I perceive to be in the left leaning mainstream media. Funny thing, my wife (who is slightly left of center although not left enough for many of her contemporaries) often gripes about FOX News, which brings up my comment about the cartoon you found so offensive. First of all as I often tell my wife: FOX News and Talk Radio wouldn’t even EXIST if the mainstream media did its damn job and just reported the news instead of slanting it. The reason FOX News and talk radio picked up so many adherents is because those of us on the right got sick and tired of seeing left leaning editorializing that so often passes itself off as journalistic reporting. I can easily see how you would be offended by that, and I don’t deny that YES the Fox News Network was foolishly left out of that cartoon. However, please remember that what you felt by watching that cartoon is how I often feel when I would see slanted news presented as hard news. I’ll give you an example; our local newspaper has a left leaning balance that it generally denies because so many left wingers will criticize its reporting as well. Okay so the local paper vehemently opposes capital punishment, and a few years ago there was a LARGE FRONT PAGE HEADLINE reading how our state “MAY HAVE EXECUTED AN INNOCENT MAN!” It was a very lengthy article; buried somewhere about 1/8 of the way from the bottom of the second page of this lengthy article was one sentence that mentions that the executed convict had actually murdered somebody else years earlier, but the murder of this victim was not the crime he had been executed for and thus “may have been innocent of committing.” Well I actually phoned the reporter and confronted him politely saying “if I didn’t know better, I would say that this article is an example of liberal bias.” The reporter said and I quote: “Sir, you would have a legitimate argument there.” I replied that if the reporting was supposed to be simply stating the facts without a slant then it sure appeared biased to which the reporter replied by repeating himself! Later on the prosecutor on this particular case wrote a rebuttal that was published in the editorial column but NOT on the front page. Okay maybe the rebuttal didn’t belong on the front page but NEITHER did this obvious piece of slanted yellow journalism! Finally I would like to add something else that I told my wife. Unlike liberals, the conservatives generally don’t gripe about the lack of diversity in our lives and are generally fine with associating with other conservatives. Her left leaning contemporaries often get offended by politically incorrect things, including ME! However one particular leftist goes on and on about how wonderful diversity is, yet when I bring up diversity of thought and opinion she immediately goes into name-calling. For example, to her (at least for awhile anyway) anybody who was critical of President Obama “must be a racist.” NEWSFLASH: this is the same tactic that the vilified Senator McCarthy often used by calling somebody a “pinko commie” whenever HE disagreed with them! Now I realize that we could have a separate debate about the perceived good and the perceived bad about Senator McCarthy, but I often roll my eyes whenever so many leftists bitch about how awful he was, especially when said leftists immediately use the same tactics to vilify the other side that McCarthy used to vilify his enemies. Thanks for the honest and thoughtful response to my post; I appreciate it.
I typically don’t care what people post. Sometimes I comment, sometimes I don’t. I have FB friends of all stripes and I see all sorts of stuff on the political spectrum (some of it quite irritating). I will only block/hide people who post the same sort of stuff every day.
It doesn’t matter if it’s political or not. Most recently I ‘hid’ someone (family member) who, seemingly, posted ‘funny pictures’ every day at 6ish. It was like he’d get off work and get busy uploading between 5-15 pictures.
Everyday.
I don’t care how funny those pictures are, if you drown out what’s viewable on my wall every day, I’m going to hide you.
I think what you just stated is pretty human, actually. I can get angry when I see what I believe is biased, one-sided commentary that may be factual but ignores other facts as well. You mention that although you tend to lean left that you get aggravated with the many non-thinking left wing comments promoting gun control. I must admit that those things annoy me as well. However, as a right winger I also get annoyed when I see very one-sided arguments about homosexuality, immigration, or the abortion issue. Again, these are complex issues and I can easily see how either side could provide valid arguments to support their positions. Sadly I don’t often see that from my right wing compatriots just like you don’t see that from your left wing compatriots regarding gun control. If only everybody else were as open minded as we are, eh?
First, this is eerily familiar and I am having deja vu over this exact situation with these exact particulars.
So instead of dealing with the issue on your own, or through some resolution achieved with said ‘friends’, you came on Dope to get opinions on something personal?
Why could your post have not simply said … *“How do you handle Facebook “friends” who post mostly political links or “statements” bashing anything that goes against their *party line?”
Or even a more condensed version with *“How do you handle Facebook “friends” who post a lot of stuff I do not wish to read or see”
*
Instead you ask a loaded question and then end up painting yourself as the intolerant one with the following :
Yet somehow in person, you’re able to avoid constant political barrages and have a nice and normal get together and enjoyable conversations as per :
I generally enjoy Facebook for its light entertainment and the opportunity to keep in touch. And besides their political jabbing, I don’t really have a problem with these people. And when there is a reunion or gathering of some sort (and my 30th is next summer), it’s nice to mingle as political opinions generally get put aside.
No, only conundrum I have here is you thinking wrongly of them despite your admissions.
