On Friday evening before I left the house to drive to a sister’s for the regular Friday night family dinner, I posted an unusual-for-me mild rant on social media about how I would rather see photos of babies and puppies than read posts about a certain deadly viral disease (that will remain unnamed on this blog.)
Posts on social media about this disease range from educated and informed to fearful and panic-stricken — the latter mostly among the less educated and more politically conservative of my on-line social community. Some posts have been riddled with dead-wrong fear-mongered crap.
But what has been bothering me is the raging politically-motivated rants about it. Really, I just sick of it. I just want to hear about your kittens, family, and good things in your life. Not the flabbler-flub regurgitated from a certain cable news station that I refer to as “faux news.”
Anyway, while I was at my sister’s…
…a niece looked at my social media post and informed me that it had been hijacked by posts from some ultraconservative so-called “friends” of mine.
I looked at it and was appalled. I wanted to deal with it right then, but unfortunately my password for that social media site is so complicated, I could not remember it so that I could sign on.
I went ahead and had a nice dinner with my family. I got home about 8:30pm, then reviewed my post. It really had “blown up” way out of proportion. This is the first time that has happened to me, and I was rather shocked (in one way, but not in another, considering the diversity of my social media contacts and their politics.)
I draw a firm line that I do not post about politics on social media, and I do not allow others to do that with responses to my own posts. Some of the responses to me on that post were so vile and negative that I decided to delete the post entirely.
I thought that was that. But the next morning, I had five of those more right-ward leaning people who had posted vile negativity on that post that I deleted contact me with further negativity. That is where I draw the line. I “unfriended” them and did not respond to their messages. Nothing I could say would do anything to change their thinking, so I chose not to feed their anger.
Wow… quite a lesson learned. I will not post anything like that again.
Life is short: apply lessons learned and cut the ties to negative acquaintance contacts you don’t need in your life.
Your last line about cutting ties with negative contacts may be one of the best bits of advice anyone can get or be given. It’s soooo true not just in political or online instances but also in social and other circumstances as well. Sorry to learn about your site having been hijacked; we do now live in an age of negativity and social media does seem to bring out the worst in some people. Sheesh!
That’ll teach ya!
I admire all the work you do to help other people. Just can’t figure out why you get tangled up in social media. I have heard many stories from others who get hurt by so called “friends.” Several years ago I was quite active in a photography forum and initially it was quite pleasant giving advice to novices. Then the self proclaimed experts and critics came along and made the whole experience quite nasty.
I feel that bullies find the internet an excellent medium to express their negative thoughts and views as they are somewhat anonymous and protected by the lack of physical contact with their victims. You did the right thing by eliminating further communication.
I am too busy with other things now and don’t have time to participate in forums and I never joined social media networks. Many employers look up potential employees on those networks to find negative information about them and use it during “Stress Interviews.” Life is simpler without those added complications.
Enjoy wearing your boots.
Trevor, my family only has babies on social media (well, announcements of their births, anyway). As the keeper of my family’s large family tree, I have no other way of finding out that I have become a Great Uncle or 99th cousin without it.
I also keep connected with a family-of-sorts of my longest-held position with a former employer. That employer tried to erase me from records of existence, but with more than 300 connections to that extended international family through social media, my former employer couldn’t pull a Soviet stunt of erasing history by eradicating memories of a former influential figure. 🙂
But I did go through my so-called “friends” list and culled some 200 connections to people to whom I am not related, I do not see or communicate with these days. So it is getting better, or shall I say, more manageable.