Policing Facebook

My husband says I’m a contrarian who disagrees just to disagree. To which I say, “No, I’m not. You’re wrong!”

A friend shared this blog column on Facebook and I basically disagreed with every word.

First and foremost — and viscerally — I disagree with policing what other people post on Facebook and shaming them for failing to follow someone else’s arbitrary standard. It’s an authoritarian impulse that I understand — dear Lord if I could prevent all sports-related posts, I would! I would! — but let's call it what it is and not cloak it in some kind of moral high ground. We can have our personal pet peeves without dressing them up as proof of society's decline.

 

And to be clear, these are arbitrary standards we're talking about. I’ve written before about the social media conundrum that if you only post positive things about your life and happy-smiling pictures, you’re criticized for image-branding. But if you post honest comments about depression or divorce or dissatisfaction, you’re criticized for reckless over-sharing and cautioned about who might be watching. 

But I also think it's telling that this blogger can't see simple expressions of excitement or pleasure or joy and pride at hard-earned accomplishment as anything other than bragging.  When I read

Let’s give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re just excited and need to brag to someone. Even if that’s the case, the only people it’s okay to brag to in life are your close friends, significant other, and family members

I immediately recalled the old truism that only liars and cheats think everyone else is lying and cheating. (And thus only a braggart thinks everyone else is bragging.) Because in all honesty, when I see that an acquaintance from high school has gotten her dream job, that a college roommate is vacationing on the beach, or that a former coworker just got his graduate degree, I don't think, "Braggarts!"  I think: "Awesome!" 

In fact, it's fair to say that that's the whole reason I'm on Facebook at all. I enjoy seeing what people are up to, I take pleasure in their victories and accomplishments big and small, I like and "like" seeing how they've changed and grown. And I can't help but wonder what kind of miserable person is scrolling through his or her newsfeed thinking, "All of these people are just trying to make me jealous!"

And then I realize, it's the kind of narcissist who thinks everyone else's Facebook posts should be crafted with his or her tastes in mind.

You know why these [kinds of posts] are unannoying? Because things in those two categories do something for me, the reader. They make my day a little better.

No. No, no, no, no, noooooo. You've got it in reverse, my friend. When someone posts on Facebook, s/he usually isn’t expecting you, the specific reader, to respond. And that means there’s little duty for the poster to consider what you might find interesting. The onus is on you the reader to — as Lisa Simpson and Paul Anka want you to remember — just don’t look if you don't like it. Just don't look!

Guarantee void in Tennessee.

If a post is irritating, skip it. If someone routinely puts up the same kind of irritating posts time and again, unfollow her or defriend him.

Facebook is an active medium for the reader and a passive one for the poster. You might see it but it’s not being sent to you. You are actively making the choice to view it — if not the first time then certainly on all subsequent occasions.

[T]he only people it’s okay to brag to in life are your close friends, significant other, and family members—and that’s what email, texting, phone calls, and live talking are for.

In contrast, emails and texts are passive for the reader. You’re not actively trying to see the toothy grins of the neighbor children who just yesterday were in your home opening every single one of your expensive specialty sodas, drinking a few sips from each, and leaving them on the counter. And yet now you have to either respond to the stream of picture texts their mother just sent — where is the damn "like" button for iMessages so I can get this over with? — or create a level of disengagement far more significant than covertly unfollowing  her on Facebook.

Because there’s simply no socially-harmonious way of saying, “I like children. But not yours. I hate your children. Stop texting me pictures of them on a daily basis.” From time to time I have no other recourse but to yell impotently at my phone, "Why are you doing this to me? God invented Facebook so that I wouldn't have to have this kind of stuff texted and emailed to me!"

Ironically, the one Facebook behavior that I would police is the one the blogger never touches on at all: political memes. Not political posts, mind you. Political memes. Although I try, my own political posts can be too glib at time — I'm grateful to those friends who have called me out on it — but nothing erodes the foundation for our democracy like memes. If the bumper sticker takes complicated, nuanced issues and distills them into a catch phrase, the political meme is like printing hundreds of those lame bumper stickers and handing them out to all your friends. 

The one that sticks in my mind most recently was created and shared following events in Ferguson.

When I went searching for this, it was only one of a dozen versions. Because if one racist meme works, why not 12?

Anyone with even a modest understanding of American history and even the tiniest slice of sincerity in genuine discourse can see how unfair this meme is. It doesn't educate, it doesn't illuminate, it simply serves to make one side feel smug and the other side feel angry.

Great responses started popping up pointing out the things that "white people" had, in fact, rioted over: 

Remember that time black people rioted over pumpkins? Me either! 

Remember that time black people rioted because a football coach was fired? Me either!

But that didn't really cut to the heart of what was going on in the OJ/Ferguson meme.

Here's a meme I just created to depict the Cicero, IL white riots which broke out when the middle class black couple pictured below, Harvey and Johnetta Clark, tried to rent an apartment. Do any of the people who shared the OJ/Ferguson meme think mine is a funny, spot-on, fair depiction of "white people"?  I'm guessing not.

The meme-ification of our politics is destroying us.  It shuts down discourse and sorts us into two camps, those who think the meme is OMG LOL funny and those who feel sputteringly angry at the unfairness. 

So yes, please keep posting about your Saturday night out with the girls and your trip to the Bahamas and your great job and your spouse who's your best friend. We're Facebook friends because I like you and I like to see good things for you. It doesn't make me feel jealous, it makes my metro ride home more pleasant. And please, if we're going to police people's Facebook habits, let's start with the ones that actually matter.