Staring out over one’s Facebook timeline can make one feel like some kind of overlord, with all one’s friends‘ updates, opinions and stray thoughts submitted for one’s judgment and thumbs-ups of approval. It can be tempting to view this space as one’s personal domain, rather than the hive of intersecting voices it truly is (less A Room of One’s Own, more Mrs. Dalloway). This notion is especially tempting when one encounters a post one finds offensive and decides to unfriend the offender who posted it.
There is a dictatorial thrill in clicking “Unfriend,” a sense of banishing dissenters to the stockade. Obviously, we aren’t really punishing the people we unfriend. We’re not ordering their profiles deleted (no matter how many of their posts we may report as offensive), just keeping our spheres from intersecting. Good fences, good neighbors. But this tactic of isolating from people with whom we disagree (and whose posts may elevate our blood pressure) can become a means of handpicking the choir to which we’d like to preach. There is little danger in posting an argument knowing that it will be seen mainly by those who already agree with it. Dialogue arises from interaction between opposing viewpoints, not from a chorus of amens from an already likeminded crowd.
I have kept Facebook friends who share posts condemning welfare recipients and slut-shaming women, who repost factually confounding stories about gay teens who convert to Christianity and realize that their sexual expression was merely an ignorant attempt to fill a God-sized absence in their lives. These posts do not make me happy; they are not what I like seeing on my timeline. They frequently make me want to gnash my teeth and throw things. But I am hesitant to blind myself to these views, not because “everyone is entitled to an opinion” (the laziest copout for preventing discussion), but because I like to be aware of what people are thinking. I would rather be confronted, in URL form, with an opinion someone I know actually holds, than be surrounded only by reflections of my own views and lose my ear for the authentic sound of an opposing side’s rhetoric. Besides, I consider many of these posters dear friends. The complicated fact is that many of us love the very people whose views chafe against our own and may even threaten our human rights.
That said, many of us lack the safety of being ourselves on media that presume to promote self-expression and connectivity. We may find it necessary to remove a judgmental friend or relative for self-protection. Enjoying social media often requires some pruning, and no one should have to tolerate online abuse. But as long as discussion remains civil, it can be healthy to steal outside one’s own camp once in a while and check out what the other side is up to.
Charles McCrory is an English major from Florence.
