- Joined
- May 31, 2018
- Posts
- 3,134
- Media
- 40
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- 11,753
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- Location
- Los Angeles, California, US
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- Sexuality
- 69% Straight, 31% Gay
- Gender
- Male
... And I feel good!
I started using FB in 2009 to keep in touch with my whitewater kayaking friends. It was fun to stay in touch during the off season and to plan and discuss boating. We posted pics and stories. Planned river trips... My family soon joined in. I then had more friends from years past showing up. My old surfing and high school people were on board. All was fun, posting things we were eating, how cool life was, and cat memes...
Then the 2016 election campaign started (2014 to be exact)... Being the Progressive Activist most of us water people are... I started to join the banter. By 2015, I started hiding and then finally dropping friends that were becoming hostile about their devotion to 'Dear Leader'. I even unfriended many of my boating friends because I didn't want to subject them to my political banters. I learned very fast that if you posted a comment against the Far Right on the Fox News FB page... All my wonderful friends would see it. But I felt it was important to share my views. So I dropped them (we are still friends in real life though!).
It's now post election 2021. My wife (who does not will not ever use FB) asked me why on earth I was looking at the comments on the Fox News FB feed. My view was: There are 50 million folks that follow Fox. Not all of them are "stupid idiots". Knowing what that large sector of the voting population is thinking is important no matter how crazy it seemed. I wanted to know how they came to their conclusions politically. Why they looked to even Civil War. I even took the time to report the violent and propagandists to FB. They never ONCE did a thing. The response was always, "There was a technical error - please resubmit...". I was starting to see a pattern.
So my point of all this? I replied to Mr. LPSG's post about what could improve this section. One thing here is there is more of a community of members with some skin in the game. I may not post much. But I do have a much clearer picture of how things work.
Anyone else a Facebook refuge? <g>
I started using FB in 2009 to keep in touch with my whitewater kayaking friends. It was fun to stay in touch during the off season and to plan and discuss boating. We posted pics and stories. Planned river trips... My family soon joined in. I then had more friends from years past showing up. My old surfing and high school people were on board. All was fun, posting things we were eating, how cool life was, and cat memes...
Then the 2016 election campaign started (2014 to be exact)... Being the Progressive Activist most of us water people are... I started to join the banter. By 2015, I started hiding and then finally dropping friends that were becoming hostile about their devotion to 'Dear Leader'. I even unfriended many of my boating friends because I didn't want to subject them to my political banters. I learned very fast that if you posted a comment against the Far Right on the Fox News FB page... All my wonderful friends would see it. But I felt it was important to share my views. So I dropped them (we are still friends in real life though!).
It's now post election 2021. My wife (who does not will not ever use FB) asked me why on earth I was looking at the comments on the Fox News FB feed. My view was: There are 50 million folks that follow Fox. Not all of them are "stupid idiots". Knowing what that large sector of the voting population is thinking is important no matter how crazy it seemed. I wanted to know how they came to their conclusions politically. Why they looked to even Civil War. I even took the time to report the violent and propagandists to FB. They never ONCE did a thing. The response was always, "There was a technical error - please resubmit...". I was starting to see a pattern.
So my point of all this? I replied to Mr. LPSG's post about what could improve this section. One thing here is there is more of a community of members with some skin in the game. I may not post much. But I do have a much clearer picture of how things work.
Anyone else a Facebook refuge? <g>
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