Sigh. I have definitely become too involved on stupid Facebook. And, now I have gotten into a word war with a guy who is married to one of my best friends.
I posted a photo of a native American and it said something about the “genocide” of the Native Americans by Europeans was a worse genocide than Nazi Germany’s genocide. Well….he takes umbrage at that, and I can see why. But, the point was that Native Americans were treated crappily, and have been for hundreds of years. I can agree that maybe “genocide” was too rough a term….but, if you were on the Trail of Tears I think you might have felt like you were being genocided.
So, my point here is to say, f*ck you, FB, for making arguments like this too easy.
Now, do I block him because he’s name-calling? On most points he is a rational person. Sigh.
Ah, first world internet problems.
Lauri's Blerg 
This is why I avoid Faceplant. This guy I volunteer with for the homeless shelter and who works in marketing thinks I could recruit more volunteers if I started a FB account, but I just can’t get myself to do it. Too many trolls out there, not to mention some of the kids I work with. A couple of them had started a fake FB account using this one teacher’s name, and they posted all this ugly crap on the wall before someone caught them. I know some people say, “It’s the internet,” but I never experienced that on Vox or even on WP.
I’d block asshat husband of best friend. Your friend might unfriend you on FB to pacify her husband, but do you need that sort of aggro online? I can’t bear it IRL so why deal with it on FB?
Just b/c it took hundreds of years doesn’t make it any less of a genocide. They used to say “the only good Indian is a dead Indian”, which sounds pretty darn genocide-y to me.
Definitely unfriend. Life is too short to put up with that shit from people you don’t have to see IRL or at least have no power over you.
This is why I stay here and on G+ where the trollage and aggro isn’t.
Mm, it’s always interesting in our new world of online communication. I’d say a conversation like this (especially when a friendship is on the line) is best handled face to face.
I’ve seen friends post things I disagree with but honestly, if it’s THEIR page, to me that’s like I’m in their house. And I need to be a proper guest, even if I disagree with what they’re saying.
Reason #3049507 why I’m not on fb
I tend to just ignore people or try to ‘agree to disagree’ on that specific topic. I have a rabid antivaxxer FB friend, that I have known since we were students, (she changed a lot) and I clearly state my point of view each time she writes bullshit on my facebook posts, but I don’t go on her page to pick a fight, and I try to not make it personal or argue with her, because that’s basically pointless. I say we obviously disagree on this, so let’s respect each others opinion and just leave it there. She buggered off when I said that and left the argument on my page. Most of my other friends have blocked her though, and publicly said why, because she was rude to them on their own pages. If you know this guy in real life and you want to maintain a good/non-aggressive relationship with him then do whatever you would normally do if he had started that argument when you were face to face.
Excellent advice! Sorry you had to deal with this crud – I know some topics hit close to home but it seems everyone out there is on hyper-alert nowadays, and what could start off as a meaningful conversation with a chance to learn quickly devolves into namecalling and one-upmanship. Big hugs and know the rest of us out there support you!
I’ve avoided FB like the plague since it was started. But here’s my take, anyway. A civilized debate or disagreement might be permissable, but abuse or name calling (especially from someone you know IRL) should not be tolerated. Would he name-call you to your face if you were at their house for dinner? I’d give one warning, that further name-calling will get him unfriended, then if he persists, the unfriending is entirely on him for not being civil. That’s how I deal professionally with asshats on the phone. One warning, then you’re cut off.
Also, WTF is his problem with the idea of “genocide”? Genocides have occurred all over the world — Rwanda, Cambodia and that’s just a couple from the 20th century. Usually the word people feel is reserved and particular to the Jews during the Nazi era is holocaust.
It IS genoicide! It’s just his white guilt that he doesn’t want to acknowledge it. Whitey brought all kinds of disease to this continent and wiped out so many! Hello, smallpox? Not to mention just outright slaughtering them.
Also glad I never bothered with Faceboob, it brings out the worst in everyone. I get the oogies just seeing that blue logo and font as comment host on a site.
I agree with Drude.
Wisdom from GOM – “Just because a dog barks at you doesn’t mean you have to answer back.”
Name-calling automatically makes any argument ridiculous. You are fully within your rights to block him. Post a rational reason for your act, and block away.
And for what it’s worth, genocide it most certainly was, but worse than what the Nazis came up with? I’m not so sure. I could be leaning this way because my mother’s family is Jewish, and if I chose I would be a practicing Jew myself – it’s hard to say.
Slaughters have happened everywhere – every year there is a huge march near my apartment recognizing the Armenian genocide of 1915/protesting against Turkey’s refusal to recognize that hideous act.
And no Facebook for me – I can barely keep up with my blog!
Heehee. Thanks, Voxie Peeps. I knew I would feel the love when I talked to all of you. And you are all correct. He started off his response to my post with “Don’t be stupid.” Um, hello. You know me, personally, and know that I am not stupid. If he wanted to rationally discuss his (yes, HIS) problem with my post, he was welcome to do that. I am pretty rational and would have been open to his points. However, starting off calling me “stupid” was not the way to go.
I told him my thoughts on his behavior, and told him that I was done discussing it. So, if he brings it up again it’s the old blockeroo for him.
And, for the record, the Holocaust is the worst thing I know of. That being said, I have been sad to find out, as an adult, of the horrors done to Native Americans, because I feel we have hidden this in our history, and I had naively thought we were better than this. (Ok, I have known we weren’t better than this for decades, but it was still a disappointment when I found this out.) As for all the other horrors going on in the world, I can barely think of them.
Thank you for your support, wise words, and I can’t wait to post some bloggy things here. Hugs.
Sounds like you handled things well. Good luck 🙂
Blarrrrggggggh!! FaceBonk! 😦 😦 😦 (((((((((((((hugs))))))))))))))) I’m so sorry you’re having to deal with this! I’d close my account and start another rather than block him, if there’s any way in the world he can find out he’s been blocked. But that’s just me: terrified. In any case, the level of drama in life is high enough, without adding to it on social media. Wouldn’t have been nice if he’d just kept his response to himself!?? But being able to argue seems to make people feel like they’re required to. ((((((((((((((((((((((((((((more hugs))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
Life really is enough without all of the crap I learn on FB. Lol. The level of “I didn’t need to know that”….is off the charts.
I must cut WAY back on being there, and, also, stop being controversial. It’s just not worth it. 😉
But, I’m not terrified of this dude. I was just very taken aback by the level of his response. Something else was going on there.
::runs back::
And this? “Don’t be stupid.” Outrageous, unnecessary, and imho a deal-breaker. I hope you block him or leave FB or delete the post and pretend it never happened or whatever you need to do to end the rancor. But after whatever it is you do, I hope you don’t have to see him in person any time soon.
Thanks, Robbie! For now I’m leaving things be. Something really bothered him, and in real life he is a really nice guy. So, as long as something like this doesn’t happen again, I’ll let it go. It just struck me as so weird!
::whew:: I’m glad this was an aberration. You’re right – if he’s usually a nice guy then something else is going on.
I still check in occasionally on that FB account I have (so I can follow the cat rescue group from who I adopted Pickles and Mila) and sometimes I look through the posts. Yours are always interesting!! I’m sorry that I never made the account active and visited you. It’s just that FB…makes me…SCREAM at the computer. I can’t stand it!!
But now that I’m posting here again, I’m selfishly hoping that maybe if you’re not there as much you’ll be here more, instead.
Can I bribe you with some Reeses?
😉
For my own peace of mind, I will allow myself to be bribed with Reeses!! 😀
YAY!!!!! ::tosses the party-size 40 oz bag of Reeses northward to Lauri and runs::
I’m on FB a lot–not being able to work, I have free time–and I use it purely for entertainment. I try not to post anything controversial or political. My goal is that nobody (except for those of you who know me well) can tell anything about my politics, religion, hockey team (GO LEAFS GO!!), etc. I do post some serious things, but they’re nearly all personal anecdotes. For example, I found out a week or two ago that a former Vox friend–a good friend with whom I chatted on the phone a number of times–OD’d. I was crushed, and I wrote a little mini-eulogy telling her what she meant to me. I think I put a Joan Jett video in it, too. When people get all obnoxiously political, I just skip over their posts. No matter how stupid they are, I know I’m not going to change their effed-up beliefs. There’s an expression that I’m messing up here, but it’s like “Don’t get into the mud and wrestle with a pig. You won’t win, and the pig won’t mind the mud.” Something like that. I refer to these people as twatwaffles, and I just let them rant. When they say something personal–about their family, friends, jobs, etc–I’ll comment. When they go ballistic, I ignore them. The only times I’ve unfollowed people has been for flaming my inbox with pictures of their damned babies–seriously, like every twenty minutes, another batch–or when people beg for money, and even the latter isn’t always a deal-breaker: life does happen.
If your that upset–especially if being a dickwad is a habit of his–I’d unfriend him guilt-free. If you want to maintain the friendship, let the subject drop (no matter how correct you are), and wing it from there.
That’s the best I can think of to tell you, hon. Good luck!!! (hugs)
Thanks, Tom! I know I do post way too many political things. Ugh. It’s rather addicting. And, you are so right, it never changes anyone’s mind.
In some small way, I think it makes me feel like I am actually doing something, when I know darn well I am not.
Pffft. Oh, well. I let the subject drop with the guy, and it’s the only problem I have ever had with him, so, for now I’ll let it go. I do find it interesting how agitated he became….and I wondered what personal thing had happened to him that made this a flashpoint for him.
Lauri – you’ve gotten some great advice. I have nothing to add, except to say that i pretty much avoid political posts, though i did put things about the shootings in Charleston plus the SCOTUS decision on same-sex marriage on my feed. But people were polite and didn’t say anything ugly. Howevet, i have gone back to inoffensive stuff, like animsl pics and vids.
As for genocide here, i think comparisons don’t work, espevially given the way the Nazis built an industry of death. Gotta go with Aubrey there (partly due to growing up with people who escaped by the skin of their teeth). That said, YES, we committed genocide, in no uncertain terms. My state has no reservations, no registered tribes, even though it was *very* populated during colonial times. The Native tribes were forced north and west and the invaders (includes my ancestors) were unrelenting. It is never discussed, even in good history books about the settlement of this state. Yet my home town, the state capital and many, many other places were founded on the sites of Native villages. It is painful, and yet, easy to sweep under the rug/ignore, because there are no survivors here. Those who did manage to live are no longer in this state.
Anyway: i think this is a good place for civil discussions – FB is the exact opposite..
Thanks, e! I totally agree. What “we”….our ancestors, have done has been tidied up and the truth needs to be taught so that we stop doing brutal, awful stuff and start to evolve.
I’m determined to get less political on darned FB. It’s just not worth the hassle.
Well,see, most of my FB peeps either post about animals or literally *are* buns and such; also musicians. I pretty much avoif political post/discussionthere,because they get ugly fast, and who needs it? It’s almost impossible to get away from that crap, but i do try.
Besides, there’s aalways the option to hide individual posts, whivh works for me.
Btw, i think that what we did to Native Nawaiians – sons and grandsons of missionaries undermining and eventually overthrowing the kingdom and psrliament there – is truly an outrage. The Native people have never received any land or money in compensation, and there are very serious problems with developers who are more than happy to build all kinds of crap on burial grounds, assorted sacred sites, etc. They get away with it less often now, but it still goes on.
My brother F. used to teach at the U. Of H but lived in an area that was largely Native Hawaiian.
It has happened in so many places. Human brutality has always been around….and I will say that probably native peoples practiced brutality on each other if no one else was around…but, it’s time we acknowledge that this kind of thing is wrong.
It’s probably still so entwined in our DNA….to fear that which is different from us, and to believe that different means lower in value. I don’t know. Some of that territoriality…..maybe most…is biological.
I have some hope when I see people overcoming that urge.
Err, i need to take a dose of my own medicine. A writer whose work i like (and with whom I’ve had friendly comment exchanges on her blog) has me on her friends list now, andmi decided to unsubscribe from her feed earlier this afternoon. I would have no problem having her on my feed *if* i could somehow filter her posts, with the political ones not showing. It’s not that i disagree with her – i don’t, for the most part – but she has been targeted by some rabidly racist men who are SF fans (SF/F is her line of work), so evety time she posts anything at all re. #BlackLivesMatter or “lots of black folks love SF” (which is true, and why not?), she gets a shit ton of trollish comments by the racist people (often under assumed names) and i can’t. even. I don’t know how she puts up with it, because it happens at her public speaking and conference panel gigs all the time. And, predictably, if it’s not her skin color, it’s that she’s a woman in a world that’s still got a huge male fanbase and how dare she?! But usually both at the same time.
Anyway… while i admire her, and her writing, as well as her classy replies to these fools, i just can’t deal with the posts themselves. It’s just too much, all the time, and i started to feel like i was being poked with sticks. It’s also that i am very private and don’t want to feel like I’m landing in the middle of other peoples’ arguments every damned time i look at FB.
Reading about the buns and other animals that people lose is hard enough, even on thd best of days, you know?
ISTM that FB is NOT a good venue for controversial topics – too exposed, too fast-moving, too hard to pin down. If i were in this woman’s shoes, i wouldn’t engage these topics on FB, and seeing them come up in my feed means that I kind of am, by proxy. Don’t get me wrong – she and a number of other women writers have chosen to take a strong stand on these issues, and if they want to do so on FB, fine. Just leave me out of it!
OK, rant over.
I totally understand, e. We have to draw lines to keep ourselves as sane as possible. I am becoming more careful. Less barky! 🙂
Less barky as in barking less? If so, you’re speaking PA Dutch, like me! 😉
Yes, exactly! My grandpa had some PA Dutch, and therefore, so do I! 😀
oh please….some people are always just itching for a fight…yes, fb makes it so easy. It kind of pisses me off that I have to even think , who will this bother, before I post it! Crap, I thought that was an excellent post…made sense to me. hmmmm about what to do?? oh I have some egg containers I’m going to drop by your house on my way to town….peace not war Lauri…my motto lately( for how long, I don’t know!lol)
Hi, Mar!! I got the cartons and the information! Fascinating stuff!!! I am working all the time…darn summer…but I hope we can talk soon!!! THANKS!!!!
I think you’re right Laurie about the “flashpoint”. I know sometimes with right winger comment the first thing that pops into my head is “are you an idiot”? but I’ve learned to pause and think before I begin typing. This guy might have an argument, at least in his own head, that is based on an understandable emotion / experience. But calm reasoned arguments aren’t as flashy as insults, and maybe this guy never heard the rule about “if you wouldn’t say it to that person’s face, don’t say it at all”.
At the very least, you probably got a glimpse into your friend’s (lack of) maturity that you wouldn’t have otherwise. I know the more I get to know my friends the more risk there is for disappointment – but we all have some fatal flaw or other.
I also agree with Tom that Facebook is a terrible venue for political opinions. It’s sort of a personal forum and it’s like the dinner table – not a great place to bring this stuff up. Finally I’ll echo Robbie – visit here more often! WP is a pretty good place to post our personal viewpoints. That’s why I signed up, to hear my friends’ own voices on things that matter. 🙂
Thanks, Emmy! I AM going to post here more often. It is certainly much more pleasant and peaceful than Farcebark. 😀
I am learning to slow down and not be over-reactive to things. Also, I totally agree that I found out more about my friend’s husband’s maturity than anything with his response. Sheeesh! 🙂
Whew. I got through about half of these comments! Someone up there said they don’t take it personally. Larui, I don’t take anything personally because you never know what’s going on with someone else, in their pea brain or life at the time. Maybe you ought to invite him to see “Unfriended” at the movies?! At least you do know what to expect from him now.
I was thinking just today about us ex-Voxers here on WP. Some exxies do spend a lot of time on FB, but we come back here for comfort and authenticity, for real friendship and sincere words when we need them. I’m going to post here more often too, cuz it makes me happy. My misery-meter is a little higher when I’m away too much.
I learned a lot from the guy’s outburst. That some things really dig in and hit people in a way that I wouldn’t have expected. And, I know him in real life….they live in Oregon…and he is kind and thoughtful, so something weird was going on.
Anyway, I don’t take anything personally, because, just like you said, we never know what is going on in someone’s life, causing them pain and causing them to be a pain in the rear. 🙂
It is much nicer here, isn’t it? Looking around at my yurt-mates! 😉
Heeee! Yurt mates! I can’t say, hear, or see a pic of a yurt without thinking of our yurt-ground in the sky!
No block. Just stop responding to the argument and maybe un-follow for awhile.
That’s what I did, Leenda. Everything has been fine, since. Just don’t feed the trolls!
I stopped back in here to see how this was going. Your post and the Peep-comments stuck with me; I’ve been trying to decide whether being upset by something is always “taking it personally” or not. I don’t think it is. Sometimes we’re legitimately upset (whether by fear or anger or frustration), even though we know that the person who prompted the upset in us had good reasons for whatever he or she did, and that those reasons had nothing at all to do with us. The challenge seems to be separating the discomfort of the upset from the person who caused it.
I’m glad to see your reply directly above — that things have been fine since. Wonderful news! And I think it’s a tribute to your compassion and understanding.
🙂