Salt On An Open Wound

Some of the “friends” on my Facebook page are anything but friends and it still amazes me how people you have almost no connection with will think it's totally appropriate to send along a friend request. I find such relationships (if you can call them that) are rarely balanced. Several years ago, I was chatting on a public Facebook page when a woman who I had gone to middle school with saw what I wrote and asked if I was a former classmate of hers. I said yes and in no time she was sending me that friend request. I thought it was strange she reached out to me because in middle school I had almost no interactions with her.

Despite my better judgment, I accepted her request and we reminisced on the messenger for a little while about the teachers and fellow students we once knew. After this initial contact, we stopped interacting for the most part. Her path in life as a married woman with adult children was as different from my life as her hobbies, political beliefs and favorite music were. Whenever she posted anything to Facebook, it never resonated with me. Whenever I posted something, she rarely reacted. So now two people with little in common had a connection that seemed to serve no purpose.

She would often post photos of her many social activities whether it was vacationing with her husband or going to a concert with friends. As a lonely single guy, I found this content to be annoying to look at. Every now and then she'd post a video from one of her favorite 80s heavy metal bands thinking it made her look like a rebel. A few times, I'd post a song from some obscure dark metal or goth band to see if I'd get a reaction from her. I never did.

This Valentine's Day she posted two memes and really bothered me. The first said: “I LOVE MY HUSBAND EVERY DAY. NOT JUST ON VALENTINE'S DAY.” Hey, that's great for you but there are people out there who have never been married and don't have anyone to love romantically.

The second meme was more vulgar and reminded me of why many Massachusetts residents live up to the nickname Masshole. It said:

 This person had lost their mother many years ago and I suspect she posted this as a way of saying we needed to put our problems into perspective. However, I lost my dad years ago too so even though we shared the same kind of pain, her post still angered me. Not only did I think it trivialized the real pain of loneliness, the vulgarity of her post was like a giant up yours to single people in general. I found these words to be incredibly insulting and had to respond in the comments section by saying, “At some point in their lives most people have had a mother on Mother's Day and a father on Father's Day but there are some people who have NEVER had anyone to love on Valentine's Day. This post is like salt on an open wound.”

It was so easy for someone who was happily married for such a long time to be critical of those who still longed for even a fraction of the kind of love she enjoyed. I was ready to call her out on that point and many more. After signing out of Facebook, I braced myself for yet another keyboard war but when I signed back in later on that night, she had not said anything. This was the other reaction I anticipated.

It was easier for her to ignore what I wrote than to admit she might have crossed a line. This “friend” thought it was better to answer with silence than to ask why I thought she was being insensitive. The lack of any response made me wonder why I even had her on my Facebook page in the first place. This same person would sometimes post about the importance of seeing the warning signs of mental illness and depression in those around you. Too bad she didn't take her own advice.

To add further insult to injury, one of her friends responded to my comments by saying she understood what I was going through. Then she talked about how she was unattached on Valentine's Day just like me. If you thought this might have been the start of a romantic relationship, think again. As this woman continued to describe herself, she dug herself deep into a hole she couldn't climb out of. She described herself as being weird. (Ladies, if you think that's a terrible opening line for a guy, then you shouldn't use it either!) Then she talked about her dysfunctional relationship with her parents and then mentioned being divorced with kids. Needless to say, I didn't respond to her comments.

Interactions like these illustrate why I think Facebook has cheapened the art of having meaningful connections with others.  My "friend" might not have intended to be meanspirited but often times people who have never experienced prolonged loneliness and isolation have no clue how insensitive they can be.

Render Unto God...

 After months of enduring negative political ads and mean-spirited Facebook posts, election day has finally arrived.  As pundits struggle to sensationalize every little percentage point on the news, I sit in a quiet darkened bedroom and collect my thoughts.

Some people are so political, they feel the need to express unsolicited opinions on a daily basis whether we want to hear it or not.  For the better part of a year, my Facebook page has been cluttered with vicious one-sided political arguments.  Some posts might have a ring of truth to them while others suffer from huge gaps in logic.  “This candidate is a bigot.”  “That candidate is corrupt.”  “The country will be ruined if X or Y is elected.”  Such a constant stream of negativity seems commonplace as people move into their own little political camps where a difference of opinion is not tolerated.

We all have our own viewpoints but I rarely post anything political to my personal Facebook page.  Honestly, what good does it do?  If a person comes out swinging and has a lack of respect for the other side are they likely to change someone's mind?  I may not agree with everything my friends and acquaintances believe in but I know them well enough to understand why they hold the beliefs they do.  Many of them can't seem to muster up that same level of understanding, though.

There are those rare times when I do take issue with what other people have posted.  Maybe I felt their post was too offensive or perhaps the analogy they used didn't seem accurate.  What usually happens is the person's friends swoop in like vultures to pounce.  On one occasion, someone's response to my argument was simply, “Fuck you.”  No debate.  No discussion.  Just hit below the belt and leave.  What really bothered me was the fact that my friend made no effort to rein in this rude behavior.

After sparring with more vultures on another post, I asked them, “Do you have any friends with different political beliefs?”  The roundabout response they gave was basically, “No.”  That's a problem.  More than a few people on Facebook have said, “If you support Candidate X then I have to unfriend you.”

It's becoming a knee-jerk nation where whole segments of the population never have to deal with anyone from the other side.  George Orwell once wrote, “The best books...are those that tell you what you know already.”  Today people use the internet to merely confirm what they already believe.  Think Candidate Y is like Hitler?  There are websites that will back up that claim.  Think Candidate Y isn't anything like Hitler?  We can find websites to defend that angle as well.

What gets lost is critical thinking.  Whenever someone hurls the word “divisive” around, I often wonder if they bother to look in the mirror.  By some strange coincidence, the people who are the most misinformed about an issue usually turn out to be the ones who disagree with you.  No need to examine your own viewpoints, however.

We have certainly rendered an obscene amount of time, money, and energy to Caesar lately but what are we rendering to God?  When the election results are in, will there be nothing but gloating and sour grapes?  You can still be a good Christian no matter who is president and part of that is treating each other with mutual respect.  The early Christians managed to persevere under the harsh realities of the Roman Empire.  What's our excuse?