UNFRIENDLINESS

Dear ______________ ,

As soon as I finish this note to you, I am going to ‘unfriend’ you on Facebook.  Although I can do this surreptitiously, I wanted to be clear about my reasons for doing so.

I know you are politically and socially conservative. I knew that long before we became reliant about social media to maintain our friendship networks. And I have no problem with your positions on the avalanche of issues that seem to bury the American public daily, and may even find of few of them compelling, although I usually am to the left of center on most things.

And I know, too, that you don’t care for the president. Although Barack Obama came into office long after you and I ceased having daily personal face-to-face contact, I could have guessed you would respond this way to his election. Even though he has taken some very moderate positions which have enraged his original base of support, nothing he does or says seems reasonable or acceptable to you.

Okay. I get that. You don’t like the guy. You are not alone.

You are the object of my first ever ‘unfriending’ because of the tone of your posts. They are remarkably racist and irrational.  I am surprised daily. I have plenty of trouble dealing with my own prejudices, most of which are not racial in nature, and it makes me squirm to deal with yours every morning, noon and night. When you sent your friend request several months ago you warned me that you would be posting quite a bit, and I told you to post away. I did not anticipate that these postings would include Obama in cartoon caricature as a monkey and Martin Luther King being described as a ‘race baiter', and a celebration of Trayvon Martin's death.

I have noticed something in the advent of electronic social networking.  We seem much more likely to express ideas and opinions through keyboards and touchscreens about which we used to be mute. There are restraints and inhibitors in face-to-face social networks that restrict us from saying stuff that ordinarily would be left unsaid via the unspoken requirements of group cohesion.  In earlier days, I would have viewed these strictures as repressive and censorial - now I am not so sure. Those restraints and inhibitors have shrunk, and, in some cases, vanished altogether. We say impulsively whatever comes to mind like Mel Gibson during a traffic stop, and what comes out is not pretty - nor do they do a thing for the common good.

I have a mental image of you as I am writing this.  I see you standing in the middle of your den vociferously defending your right to free speech and casting aspersions on me for being fearful and sheepish as I knuckle under to, and become another shill for, the left wing media establishment. I guess I have plenty of shortcomings so I will take this into consideration. But in a world in which we seem to have less and less control over what drifts our way on computer screens and airwaves, decisions about what we ingest and digest are vital to our dwindling autonomy and our moral health.

So I am taking your crap off my plate.

My best to the wife and kids …