the art of defriending, pt. 2

those of you involved in my little twittersphere know of yet another incident/run in/whatever i had with a facebook friend of mine. its the same person i had a run in with a few months back, and as you’ll recall, it was quite ugly. it got very heated then, as it was over politics, he being of the right-wing nutjub type (seriously, that’s about as nice as i can put it), i of the liberal lean.

a couple weeks ago, he decided he’d had enough of… something. put quite plainly, i don’t know what triggered it. i’ve consciously stayed out of debating politics at length for awhile now, and i’d hidden him from my newsfeed, so if i perchance glanced at his profile, it was always more of a “roll my eyes, move on” sort of deal. his reaction to (whatever) recently caused him to stumble across some newly unleashed (?) privacy settings that disallowed commenting or posting on anything: shared stories, status updates, photos, links, videos, etc.

i personally thought it strange and took a bit of umbrage to it, thinking he’d made a list of his liberal leaning friends and blocked them. i messaged him, asking what the deal was and it turns out, it wasn’t just our small little group (who, by the way, mostly had given up debating him because it was like throwing pebbles at a granite wall); it was everybody. no one could comment on anything.

alright, fine… whatevs.

but then he posted something about a week ago, something to do with a local UM church deciding to leave its historical home and move to a smaller, presumably safer, location and he went on and on about the members not having the balls to fight back against the (presumably) bad elements in their neighborhood and how important it was to stand ground. that’s all well and good, but having the minimal amount of insight into the “church world” i have, i knew that there were probably other extenuating circumstances, likely to do with money. giving in the church is down, all across the board when it comes to smaller congregations. i felt it unfair to blast this congregation without any further background knowledge, but i couldn’t share this opinion in the public forum.

so… i defriended him. again.

he found out (how isn’t important) and he went on an absolute tear about it, about how his liberal friends were sissies and how we weren’t raised right. of course, i didn’t see this; he sent me a short message about it that was polite enough. but a mutual friend sent me a screenshot of the screed, so i felt it my obligation to give him my side of it.

here’s the thing: if you’re going to join a social network, the point isn’t to put walls up around yourself to be completely antisocial. i know i hold a very liberal (ha) view on social networking: i take a very wide open stance in regards to what i say and what other folks say. i’ve censored maybe two things someone has written to me or about something i posted. but i’m in “the game” to be part of a community that shares and talks and debates and grows. what’s the point of being part of a social network if you’re not going to be sociable?

i completely understand and respect folks’ right to privacy and know that my views on twitter and facebook aren’t shared by everyone else. but what’s the point of being “facebook friends” if we can’t treat each like we would in public? i woud daresay that if i met you at a bar or you came over to my house and i told you i was going to talk and yell and scream and express myself but you couldn’t reciprocate, we wouldn’t be friends in real life for very long.

but that’s the stance he took and still takes. he treats his facebook page as a closed door policy, that he and only he should be able to post what he wants without repercussion. to an extent, i get it. but i can’t wrap my head around blocking off all outside communication to the point where only he is right and all other opinions are baseless and (in his words) “unAmerican.”

what’s the point of joining a social network if you’re not going to be social? why would anyone want to be “facebook friends” with anyone like that? he has nearly 1,000 friends and as of this writing, none of them can comment on anything: not his shared links, not his status about drinking beer, not even pictures of his cats. would you stay friends with that person?

of course, i explained this to him, that this wasn’t done in anger, it wasn’t personal, it wasn’t even political: i just didn’t see the sense in keeping dead weight on my facebook account. if i can’t interact with you, what’s the point?

he still doesn’t get it, and that’s fine. his prerogative.

but if i can’t “like” that picture of you and your grandmother or comment on a picture you took of the beach or congratulate you on some other life event… what’s the point?