Random thoughts while making my car payment:
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Faithful readers (all three of you) will recall my column last week, in which I vowed to temporarily rid myself of Facebook in an attempt to salvage what little remains of my sanity.
Anyway, a week’s gone by and I am proud to report that I’ve been Facebook-free and lived to tell the tale.
So, how tough was it?
Not very. Long story short: I can live without Facebook.
There’s a lot of nice things to say about the social media app — it’s a wonderful way to catch up with friends and family and it can be at turns humorous and socially edifying. On the down side, it can and often does turn into a high-tech version of a sewer.
The villain, as it is with many things in life, is politics. My Facebook friends span the political spectrum, from unashamed liberals to deep red conservatives. And that’s fine: No side of the political spectrum has cornered the market on wisdom or the truth.
The problem is that people have become so entrenched in their political ideas, so convinced of both the rightness of their positions and the wrongness of their opponents, that it has become impossible to discuss politics in a manner remotely civilized.
And Facebook simply magnifies the problem. Not only are people who post political rants right about their views, those on the other side of the spectrum are wrong. Worse than that, they’re borderline evil for even considering to disagree with the obvious rightness of the poster.
What happens then is a version of a shouting match, complete with name-calling and language that can be generously described as salty. At best, there are hurt feelings. At worst, it all devolves into the equivalent of a child’s “I know you are, but what am I?” argument.
The absolute worst thing about it, however, is that the entire exercise is pointless. Political arguments are rarely won and that’s even rarer when you start things off by ridiculing those with opposite beliefs.
Well, that’s just stupid. And what was even more stupid was that I willingly traveled down the rabbit holes of those political posts. I consider myself an intelligent person, but a truly intelligent person wouldn’t bother with stuff like that. I did, however, and the only thing that happened was I could feel my blood pressure rising.
That’s not a good thing, doctors say.
Anyway, I finally figured enough was enough. I didn’t want to remove Facebook from my computer and smart phone, but the last thing I wanted was for me to stroke out over some ridiculous political nonsense.
I decided to take a time out from Facebook, and it was easier than I imagined.
Sure, I missed the posts from loved ones, funny messages from friends and acquaintances and the occasional cute photos of babies or puppies (you can never go wrong with cute babies or puppies).
But I didn’t miss them that much — and I surely didn’t miss the political name-calling. I found my mood in general was better this past week than it’s been in some time. Crediting that to my temporary ban on Facebook might be a little extreme, but I’m sure it played some part.
So, what should I do going forward? Should I make my hiatus permanent? No, I don’t want to do that. Like I said, it’s a nice pipeline to people I care about (and don’t forget the cute puppies, either).
At the same time, I have decided that nasty Facebook posts are something I can easily do without.
Therefore, here’s what I’m going to do: I am going to message my Facebook friends and let them know that ill-tempered or downright nasty posts are no longer welcome on my home page. If the stuff persists, I will ban (I believe the Facebook term is “un-friend”) those people.
I hate doing that, but I also hate feeling my blood pressure rise. And my good health and well-being certainly outweighs someone’s political opinion.
You may call that censorship. I prefer to call it editing.
Steve Reagan is a staff writer at the Snyder Daily News. Comments about his column may be emailed to news@snyderdailynews.com.