Unfriending

Photo by Prateek Katyal on Unsplash

I have a lot of friends from High School that I follow on Facebook. Since the election in November 2020, I've unfriended quite a few of them who have turned nasty. I'm all for freedom of speech and different viewpoints, but sometimes it crosses a line into pure hatred or even threats. And I didn't realize how many of my old friends subscribed to ideals I find selfish, unkind, and archaic.

A couple weeks ago I had to unfriend my High School best friend, I'll call him Felix. We didn't see each other much afterward school and I always knew he thought differently than I did, but again ... that's not a problem for me as long as one is respectful of other viewpoints.

But the other day Felix posted something about the January 6th attacks on the Capitol being the work of antifa. A mutual friend, I'll call him Oscar, pointed out that antifa was an ideal devoted to stamping out fascism (anti-fascism) ... like our grandfathers fought against in WWII ... not a group that coordinates anything. Felix then replied with a comment shaming Oscar for comparing nazis to the Capitol insurrectionists and then insinuated Oscar's opinion was somehow less valid because he hadn't served in the military like Felix had. The whole comment and following comments from others was just gross.

It made me realize that the divide in this country is even worse that I thought. We can't even agree on proven facts like the Earth is round, or Trump supporters attacked the Capitol building (provoked by Trump and other leaders); both are proven on multiple videos, photos, eye-witness accounts, etc. How can we have any kind of rational discussion or come to any sort of understanding when we can't even agree on the basic fundamentals? Furthermore, how can we have any meaningful dialog when we don't respect each other?

So anyway, I unfriended Felix because I don't need that kind of shit in my feed.


Day 28 of 100

#100DaysToOffload






Comments powered by
Talkyard.