Recent events have moved some to show their true selves on social media and eesh, with a side of ‘seriously?’. Some may benefit from employing the art of inner monologue (last 2 words always in the voice of Austin Powers for me). Of course there are exceptions. Some have also revealed themselves to be pleasantly well thought out, respectful and nuanced in their approach to interacting with the world around them. Often times entrenched willful ignorance, intolerance, insecurity, insensitivity, and intellectual sloth with a dash of oversimplification and mock and/or out-sized outrage are more at play than wanton evil or maliciousness. Many are at their root well intentioned, if a tad misguided, individuals and I can respect that. But in a fluff forum such as FB life is too short to suffer their virtual company unnecessarily and debating anyone on a platform built for trading family pics, slacktivism, recycled memes, showing loyalty to some team/technology/party/automaker/for profit commercial product or another, and Farm, Candy or some other such games and whatnot is an exercise in futility. I am not delusional. What on earth can I say or do differently for someone that has had a lifetime to entrench themselves in their current belief system? Nothing, except self induce a state of agita by engaging them. Just back away slowly. Insecurity will cause many to burrow in further and hurl tired, old rhetoric with intent, whether conscious or subconscious, to aggravate, instigate, agitate, obfuscate, intimidate and/or irritate in attempts to make those they perceive as enemy or adversary to become irate. Discord over discourse.
All with the goal of protecting ones ‘turf’, which is in itself an artificial construct, whether intellectual or physical, but I digress and that is a discussion for another day. I abandoned that road long ago. No thanks. I am good.
In related news I used to struggle with how to clean up my FB contacts, but not any more.
-ELW
Eric L. Woods 