This post may seem like mean-spirited gossip. I am aware, but I think it may be useful for some other things I want to explore next week.
When I was posting about my concerns about being a scold, I started thinking about when people were disagreeing with me on Facebook and then unfriended me.
For the three I was thinking of specifically, it always happened around election times. With at least two of them I think a big part of it was that I was a woman disagreeing with them, refusing to see how right they were.
Since it was mostly regarding voting and anger at the Democratic candidate, I wondered if they saw things any differently now. Would we be in agreement now?
I guess there should be a question about whether I was wrong, but since it was so much about elections, and Trump is himself, I will not concede any ground here.
I will also not concede ground on defending the posts I made on my own Facebook page about things I strongly believed in when people were arguing points that I knew were wrong. If I had been the one arguing on their pages, that might be another issue.
I realize this is starting off where I might be the one not open to personal growth. For these areas, yeah, I am pretty comfortable.
That leads to one more issue: I am not going to name people. I believe this is appropriate. However, when I do that (I did write about at least some of these incidents before) I frequently get messages with people wanting to verify their guesses.
(Which I get, and if you ask I probably will tell you.)
Anyway, to eliminate some of the need to guess...
This will only cover people who deleted me after their efforts to change my mind failed. Therefore, soft deletes for posting stupid stuff that I knew would lead to a fight are not in here.
The person I deleted after a discussion on police racism after he stated he would be okay with one (Black) friend of mine being shot in a nice neighborhood, because after all, he did have a criminal record (though not for anything you should shoot someone for) would not count. However, I know his arrogance and crookedness did lead to a near nervous breakdown and rupture with his friend and business partner, so my expectations for him are low.
It also does not include the person I deleted for becoming really abusive when I was supporting Clinton over Sanders. However, I did look her up a while back to see if local measles outbreaks had softened her vaccine-cautious stance at all, and no, it had not.
Also, for the two people from school who were always correcting everybody in the most obnoxious way possible, I was never friends with the one who died (though I did talk to him at a gathering) and for the one who was always telling women how they were so cute and he always had a crush on them, I blocked him after he got nasty with me when I explained why I did not feel comfortable accepting his friend request (due to some spying).
So it's not any of them!
That leaves three.
The one from longest ago, while I was disagreeing with him, a friend was disagreeing with him worse. He couldn't unfriend her, so he did unfriend me. (This is the one where I did not notice the gender aspect as much, but it have have just been less personal for me because of the other woman, who ended up leaving Facebook.)
He has since moved to Texas. While it is no longer his profile picture, he did at one point change it to the Marine Corps War Memorial (Iwo Jima) statue style photo of Trump with the bloody ear, with a lot of hearts all around it.
If he hadn't unfriended me then, I suspect it still would have happened eventually.
The second one, who had previously complimented my intelligence which I think made my disagreement more bitter, has changed his name. I thought maybe there had been some mix-up, but those pictures of the kids are his. The pictures are really old, but they are his. I feel like there is a divorce in there somewhere.
Anyway, along with some anime and football, he has an angry post about Noam Chomsky endorsing Biden, a comment that something that was labeled neo-conservatism is actually grass roots conservatism, and a Rick and Morty video clip saying that gaslighting doesn't exist with the comment "true". (In that clip, it is a man telling a woman that, arrogantly correcting her, but that is probably a coincidence.)
He seems like a lot of fun.
Finally, the third -- who could not reference Clinton without changing "Hill" to "shill", "shrill", or "kill" -- seems to only post about music now.
That might show some change, though only at a level to avoid the issue, not fighting for anything better.
I get being exhausted by it all, I even get a sense of futility, but hey, you were part of the harm. Suck it up and do something.
I am afraid this post feels very self-indulgent, especially since having done the review now my first thought seems to be "Good riddance!"
There is a second thought, though, of some sadness.
Leaving aside those two that I was never friends with, these are all people that I have liked. I often liked them a lot. I remember good things about them.
I know they would not agree, but the disagreements we had were fundamentally about the right of others to exist unmolested, and about being good to each other. That so many people who would endorse that in general couldn't live with that when it specifically conflicted with their ego and prejudices is a tragedy.
It is not less of a tragedy that the ego and prejudices were unexamined.
That just makes it worse.
Related posts:
https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2016/04/fighting-on-internet-three-stories.html
https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2016/06/borders-and-boundaries.html
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