Facebook Unfriendliness

I go on Facebook about five times a day, increasingly with mixed feelings. I've sometimes made joyous connections (and reconnections) with people through that system and I've read informative articles and discussions. Fine. Now, here comes the mixed part…

I don't know if it's me getting older or our intraspecies dialogue growing coarser. Most likely, it's both…but I'm getting increasingly dismayed at vitriol, insults and outright anger. I sometimes even feel that people are being too nasty to Donald Trump, a man I think is seriously harming this country and its citizens. He is also, I believe, responsible for a large chunk of this coarseness…or maybe just for making it more socially acceptable to let it out.

Please note that I am not trying to deny anyone's Right to Free Speech here — but mine includes the right to say I think someone's being rude or hostile or even — and this is often the case — that they're being so hysterical as to kill all possibilities of actual, valuable discussion. Free speech certainly includes my right to absent myself from forums that I think have just devolved into screaming matches…or at least have ceased to be constructive in any way. At some point, many of them just become about some Wanna-Be Alpha Male (even if it's a female) trying to "win" by shouting down or driving away everyone else.

I understand and can rationalize a certain amount of the hysteria with regard to politics, where there may be genuine, reasonable fears that a given person or action will get us all killed, destroy our planet and/or health insurance, raise our taxes, etc. I am stunned though at the sheer hatred I see out there for certain movies, celebrities, athletes, musicians…even comic books. Sometimes, I see what feels like actual loathing towards someone who has committed no wrong greater than simply being annoying on television and I think, "You know, you can make Billy Eichner totally disappear from your world by changing the channel."

In most cases, I leap to the assumption — perhaps unfairly but often accurately, I think — that the person who is livid at some TV host or comic book artist is actually just mad about his or her own life. There is no anger in this world like self-anger but often, angry people are in deep denial that that's what they're railing against.

In online forums, I find myself in two kinds of discussions and I've come to think of them as Real Discussions and Cockfights. The "Cockfights" label works on two levels because those arguments are about as hysterical and meaningful as two roosters trying to peck each other's eyes out, and also because those battles have a lot to do with virtual genital size.

In a Real Discussion, the participants genuinely want to hear what each other has to say. I've been in or witnessed some great Real Discussions since I got my first modem — discussions that have informed me, changed my mind about things, entertained me, given me new ways to look at things…

In a Cockfight, all that matters is who wins — or more accurately, who can claim victory, if only to himself. There are some people who, when they enter a Real Discussion, simply have to turn it into a Cockfight. That's when I know it's time to get out because that thread ain't going anywhere.

It won't have any more substance to it than…well, a Cockfight. I would never venture anywhere near the real kind, the kind involving actual birds. I'm going to try harder to avoid the kind I sometimes encounter on Facebook. Like the real kind, they always end with both sides bloodied…and even the winner doesn't have a lot of feathers left.