There is a line in the game L.A. Noire that really should be taken and spoken to. Early in the game, Cole Phelps tells his partner on the force, "Friends who want to stay friends don't discuss religion or politics." You would think some people would get the message, but nope. Which brings up the topic of politics. You try to avoid it. No matter how hard you try, it keeps being brought up by some people. It's constantly seen on cable news with whichever news personality on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC. There's the late night crew, which is basically liberal central. It is completely unavoidable, and it gets ultra annoying.
I have been on Facebook for six years now. There have been a lot of people that are friends with me and still are. Some of them had to be unfriended because of constant spamming of their posts or whining like a soap opera about their life. It's a difficult choice, but sometimes the trigger has to pulled to click on unfriend. In the case of politics, I have never seen people so divided into this past election where the constant spamming of who they view as the bad guy, good guy. Constantly sharing things from the politicians that hoped to elected. You hope that it's just for the election and hopefully things calm down as time goes on for whoever becomes President. That message was never clear to a few.
When you try to goad someone who has an opposite view you can't stand by tagging that person, you are a piece of shit. That's what happened with someone I unfriended. I know everybody is different, and we all have different emotions with certain things. However, with the kind of mentality I saw, it is so stupid to even do that to ones you know. A definition of low blow. Another person was constantly spamming about what was going on with the President and the constant berating. If someone doesn't like Trump, I can get that and understand. It wasn't like the choices were any good last year. But if it's all you post about, there's not much choice.
Then there's unfriending my own cousin. I got nothing against family. You may not necessarily agree with certain things, but it's not anything worth arguing or talking about. She is a big supporter for Bernie Sanders, and it was constant spamming throughout the election of this guy. As mentioned, you hope things calm down after the election. That was not the case. An occasional photo of her child was seen, but it was basically sharing Sanders post this, Sanders post that. It wasn't an easy choice to unfriend, but I'm not gonna deal with four years of the same crap.
At this point, my grandfather is one of those people who speaks on his mind. Unfortunately, he doesn't grasp the concept that others will see what he has written and that there are certain things you can't say in a public area. He has recently been constantly in Facebook Jail, arguing with strangers regarding politics. Coming back, he whined about the First Amendment. Part of me wants to tell him that you can't say certain things, but I don't think he would ever get the message and understand it. It's a lost cause.
Twitter is a little different. It's less on people you know, but more so celebrities who constantly Tweet their thoughts, and as it's shown the last year or so, their political thoughts. With the way Hollywood has been recently, you don't feel bad if you have the opposite view of some of these actors, directors, etc. I get everybody has a voice to show displeasure or something good, but when you destroy your career the way NFL player Colin Kaepernick did, there's no recovering. There might be ways to improve the image a little bit, but it's not going to be enough. It doesn't help either when a lot of people listen to buffoons like Anderson Cooper, Bill O'Reilly, or Rachael Maddow who fit their political orientation on television.
You try to avoid it, but you can't as long as it's constantly plastered to various forms of media. I'll end by saying you can find ways to avoid the constant spamming of political posts and topics on certain sites. May your health be a good one and stress free one in an age of social media armchair politicians.
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