Irreconcilable Differences



Is there a social media platform you avoid in this turbulent environment? For me, it's Facebook. I don't like X either, but I left that platform some time ago with zero concern. I never really had much of a presence there anyway, and while strangers' posts enraged me, at least the vast majority were just that; strangers.

On Facebook it's far more personal. These are people I either grew up with as a child through young adulthood, or others I grew up with through a 30-year career in the military, and now as a military retiree four years beyond my time in uniform.

I used to say Facebook was the town square. It was the place people came to share good personal news, discuss tough topics, sometimes agree, sometimes disagree, but at the end of the day we all went home at night, committed to come back the following day as friends.

Today, the crowds arrive at the town square daily, armed to the teeth to battle.

Last December I made a conscious decision to leave the platform. I couldn't delete my account completely because Facebook requires you to keep a personal page to access a professional one. And my professional page is a must for my company.

These days when I go onto the platform for work purposes, I do so through a third party app to ensure I never see my personal page. I still use the standalone messenger app because friends and family who care to actively be in my life interact with me there. There are increasingly few who do.

My decision to leave the platform was based off a strangely short-lived disagreement with supposed "friends." It was enough to permanently impact a cherished view I had of them for decades. The experience taught me just how fragile relationships are in this environment where we can only be friends as long as we're in absolute agreement at all times about all things. If not, delete, unfriend, or unfollow. 

The experience was so ugly to me that I self-canceled off the platform. I don't think the people who caused me this traumatic experience know or care they were the cause of me souring, and ultimately leaving the platform. That's the name of the cancel-culture game, right? Cancel and move on like it never happened. It worked. They succeeded. I left.

Additionally, I knew a year of high emotions and angry posts was ahead during this election cycle. No way I was gonna stick around for that.

This past week I made the mistake of opening up FB, mostly out of curiosity after former president Trump's assassination attempt, and then President Biden's diagnosis with Covid19. I wanted to see if it was as toxic as I remembered. It took me two seconds flat to see it was worse.

Last year there was at least a small group of reasonable people on the platform. It seems most of them left searching for sanity elsewhere, like I had. 

What's left now are two warring tribes. Each screaming into it's echo chamber and carefully curated "friend" group, where all the members enable their loudest, most entitled, and arrogant voices by celebrating everything said... and carefully staying on message and in-line.

There is no room for compromise. There are only two extreme visions of America. Each group believes it's right, and each is willing to die on its hill for it. Each thinks it has THE "absolute" moral high-ground. Hypocrites, one and all.

America seems headed for a national divorce due to Irreconcilable Differences, and I'm not sure any of us who believe in love for our neighbors will be able to do anything about it.

I haven't felt this distraught in quite a long time. Actually it hasn't been since the last time I opened my Facebook account. I haven't been able to shake the filthiness of that bottomless pit.

I think I won't sign into Facebook for awhile.

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