Normally I don’t like to air grievances on my blog but I feel that I need to address this issue. Facebook once was a way to connect with family and friends, to keep up with those you couldn’t see everyday. I thought this was pretty cool considering I live hundreds and in some cases thousands of miles away from my friends and family. I’ve been on it for ages.
I share a lot of stupid stuff like cat videos and jokes. I also share a lot of environmental pic and videos. I don’t post a lot of status updates on my actual life unless its something important that I’m proud of my kids for or something of that kind. I share things that make me laugh and rarely things that make me cry. When I share things that make me laugh they are usually sarcastic or ironic. I can’t help that I have a weird sense of humor.
Before I share, I always think about the repercussions of the more controversial posts and many of them I choose not to share. Also I also see a lot of horrendous posts that I don’t even want to look at, but I don’t attack the people posting them. There is no way to win a trolling fight on the internet. I don’t engage, I just move on.
Recently I lost a couple of friends. People that I have known all my life suddenly weren’t my friends on Facebook anymore. I tried to re-friend they but they haven’t responded. That’s when it occurred to me that it might have been because of one stupid meme that I posted.
You unfriended me because of one meme?
Yes, I actually thought that. I was completely shocked. I had grown up with these people in a tiny little town. They know that I’m weird. I’ve always been a bit off kilter compared to everyone else. I’ve always had a sick sense of humor. So why now? What changed that made me so terrible in their eyes that our friendship is suddenly broken?
I posted a meme on Facebook. I didn’t write it, but I thought it was funny in a very satirical way. What can I say? I have a very twisted sense of humor. It was a picture of the Women’s March the words said something to the effect of Trump got more women walking in one day than Michelle Obama did in eight years. I found this funny in a horrible way. It had nothing to do with Trump or Obama. It had nothing to do with my opinion on the Women’s March. I posted it because of the sarcasm and the satirical commentary on our society as a whole. Eight years of positive campaigning for women achieved lack luster results, but hatred of a single man brought marchers out en masse. I shared it to make a point. Our society is based on hatred now not tolerance or positive motivations.
I received mixed reactions about the post. Some people found it as funny as I did. Others told me it was a distasteful post. And suddenly I was unfriended. I was really hurt. I am not normally a person that seeks out confrontation. I don’t like it. I thought about taking the post down. I stewed for days about it. I thought I was a terrible person. I went back and looked at the rest of my post trying to understand if I was going off the deep end of Facebook with tasteless nasty posts. I searched and I searched my timeline and really surprised myself about how positive my shares really were. I never thought of myself as a positive person but I guess I am on Facebook.
So where does that put me? Am I tasteless and horrible just for one post or was it a quark compared to all my other positive posts?
Seems like a case of my life mimicking the meme I posted. Got more people hating me in one post that I have in nine years! Is this the way we want to live our lives? Where only hatred and effrontery can motivate people to action? I hope not. The very thought makes me ill.
This brings me to the friends that cut ties. If they are so easily offended do I need to keep them in my life or move on the people who are more tolerant and understanding?
Some will say that I need to work at them and wear them down. Teach them that tolerance and understanding comes from communication not from severing ties. Show them that there are many ways of dealing with situations and many ways of changing the world. Satire is one of them by very definition:
adriana pridemore 