Everyone has those friends on Facebook who fill up your newsfeed with posts that completely and totally disagree with your line of thinking. Particularly in times of heated political and social debate, these people can become fervent with the opposing viewpoint, posting inflammatory statements one after another. Most people I know take one of two approaches to these friends: actively arguing with them via the comments section, or deleting the ‘friend’ entirely.
Every time I find an “anti-vaccine,” “anti-Islam,” “anti-refugee,” “all lives matter,” or “planned parenthood secrets” post on my feed, I am filled with dread and anger. I hover over the post for a moment and decide whether the source looks reputable enough to bother examining the content, almost delete the post, contemplate deleting the friend, and then ultimately move on.
In most cases, the people I would consider deleting are the sorts who just wouldn’t be convinced by anything I could tell them or show them, so arguing seems futile. So why don’t I just follow along with the trend and delete them?
Well, whether or not I like it, there are a lot of people in this world who agree with these Facebook friends of mine. It’s easy for me to forget this fact when I am generally surrounded by family and friends who are mostly in agreement with me, and when the internet automatically censors and sorts my content with an intention of showing me things I ‘like’. I rarely listen to the news unless it’s NPR, and that’s hardly what the majority of the United States pins as their top news source.
These Facebook friends actually serve a vital role in my life. They are people I vehemently disagree with but have some sort of personal connection to. They are real people, and I have probably seen something about them that I really like. Unlike when I listen to Fox news or hear Donald Trump speak, I am forced to realize that people actually do believe this stuff that I often think is totally unbelievable. As much as I want to, I can’t dismiss these viewpoints as unimportant or uninfluential. These friends are a bright red stop sign, checking me on the so-called-progress I think our society is making.
It’s so easy when you’re in a city like Seattle or attending a liberal-leaning college to see the world as you think it should be within your reach. The bubble I create wherein everyone is ready and willing to discuss issues sensitively, openly, vulnerably… Well, that is a bubble that needs to pop every so often or else I run the risk of becoming complacent. Particularly, being white and not witnessing much of the racial violence that occurs on an everyday basis, I am at a great risk for becoming complacent and therefore a silent and complicit bystander.
So, today, I say thank you to the people I don’t agree with for sharing articles and opinions that I want to hate. I need to see conflicting beliefs, and I need to know what you’re thinking. I know it’s not all that I can and should do to work toward cooperation and better dialogue, but I think it’s important all the same. I live in my bubble a lot of the time. I’d like to spend more time trying to find ways out of it than building mechanisms to keep me in.
Ladybird Fly 