I never thought I would unfriend people on Facebook for any other reason but us not being friends anymore whether it would be due to growing apart, realizing we weren’t really that close of friends, etc. I survived election season with only removing one person and that was because her husband was using her account more than she was, and I didn’t know him and his posts annoyed me. I made it through election night and the days thereafter and even inauguration day by just overlooking posts which bothered me.
This past weekend, however, my tolerance level broke. Two people are now unfriended and one I have stopped following due to their sheer ignorance in posting. One’s posts against abortion filled my news feed. While I respected his opinion on the issue, his inability to realize that the marches that occurred across the country and the world were about more than just that one issue was too much for me. Another person’s immature memes were beyond juvenile for someone her age. She erroneously thought that all the people marching were protesting Donald Trump as president. If she had only watched some of the interviews conducted at the various marches she would have realized that while yes, there were certainly people marching for that reason, there were plenty others who sought to bring attention to various issues, not just protest.
The final person irked me the most. A lady who I considered a very kind and caring person posted an article about Madonna’s speech and how her words sounded like a terrorist threat. I will certainly agree that Madonna should have chosen her words more carefully and anyone who uttered them who wasn’t a celebrity surely would have been arrested. Below the article several people had written comments and this person wrote back stating that she had neither read the article nor listened to the speech. I can only infer that she drew her conclusion based on the article’s headline.
I was dumbfounded. Why would anyone share an article that they hadn’t even read? I recognize that too many people rely on their news feed as a reliable source of information instead of investigating issues and stories themselves, but to not even read something before posting it? I felt like it was solid evidence of the inability for people to think on their own anymore.
Where does this ignorance originate? Is it a lack of a quality education? Is it an upbringing that relies on skewed viewpoints and a lack of exposure to other ways of thinking? Is it the main stream media whose main goal it seems is to divide the nation with their biased reporting instead of providing solid journalism? Is it social media where “information” can spread like wildfire with more people interested in propagating falsehoods than fact checking before posting?
With ever increasing uncertainty of truth from a biased media I think it is so important to truly analyze issues before forming opinions. My husband and I will regularly alternate between CNN and Fox News because it is very apparent to us which way each of the two leans, and we do our best to listen for facts instead of opinions. We read a wide variety of websites as well, often finding a story on one and searching for more information on another site just to look for similarities and discrepancies. It can be tedious and it’s quite disappointing that it has to even be done, that what you read and hear from the news can’t be taken at face value but always with a grain of salt. It is, however, the only way one can even attempt to find out the whole truth.
Trump supporters think Trump protestors will destroy the country. Trump protestors think Trump and his supporters will destroy the country. I think ignorance by both is what is destroying the country.
