Facebook – A love Hate Relationship

This is the second in a series of posts about changes that have affected my life in recent times, and how I feel about those changes.

The last year or so has been a year of change for me. A massive amount of change, in fact, perhaps the most change in a one year period that I can remember, and as I have said before, change isn’t always welcome, but more than often necessary.

Part of my general life philosophy is to keep going. There was a time in my younger years when I very much took things to heart and became incredibly sad and emotional about negative factors in my life.

As we age, most of us tend to develop a thicker skin and learn to shrug things off. You can still be mad or sad about things, but I prefer to move on and move away rather than prolong the suffering.

So Facebook…

Facebook came into my life in 2007, being an early adopter of many forms of technology due to my work.  I had heard about Facebook but had resisted joining because I was already a member of two similar sites, Friends Reunited and MySpace.

My partner had joined Facebook and was telling me how good it was to link up with old friends and share news and funnies with current pals and family too. I resisted further, saying it was a trend or a fad, and it would most likely never catch on, ha! How wrong could I have been?

Myspace and Friends reunited bit the dust pretty quickly as everyone caught the Facebook Bug. Eventually, I succumbed to it and was very impressed initially. The sheer amount of features that were built into the platform made sharing content really easy, it was almost like blogging but on steroids.

You could easily share whole albums of photos and really easy to share links and videos. Perfect, particularly for someone like myself who worked in tech and was always looking for new ways to get ideas across to new and wider audiences. If I’m honest these are still great features that I like about Facebook to this day.

My Facebook Early Wins

Everyone loves sharing
I was one of the early people to buy a decent digital camera and start sharing images en masse. Back in the early days of the internet, most people had analogue cameras or used low-quality cameras on mobile phones. I love taking photos and started setting up albums to share with friends. I got plenty of positive feedback on my photos and artwork and that really was fun.

Also, I’m a bit of a rambling raconteur. You know this, it is what you’re reading. Anyway, I had the opportunity to share written pieces and poems with people too. I mostly used Facebook Pages, and Facebook Groups for sharing written articles keeping my feed for personal stuff, believing that pages and groups were the best places to share stuff with people who actually care about “issue A” or “issue B”.

In the early days of Facebook, everyone was just learning the etiquette and sometimes people would share inappropriate posts by writing it or posting them directly on your wall. I quickly blocked that. Working in Education, as I was at the time, I didn’t need anyone I worked with seeing anything that was less than professional.

Life on Facebook was good, it was fun. Posting pics articles and links, chats with pals, what’s not to like?

Nothing stays the same…

Facebook Changes upset users

Over time, Facebook began to change, constant feed changes, layout changes and algorithm changes altered both the look and feel of Facebook. It began to be fewer mates and more contentious stuff, a lot more video too. Let me point out that I fully understand why Facebook did this, I also appreciate that Facebook is (Free), so we as users have no say really in such matters.

Facebook was moving toward monetising its content and so its algorithm was learning what we all liked and talked about.  This was so that it could serve ads and content that would match our interests. That’s how it makes money and stays in business.

As a political person, my feed became dominated by political material, this for me was the start of a very slippery slope. Never being one to hold back, I’d engage in deep, and often long-winded tirades about political topics, such as terrorism, racism, pollution, veganism and just and just about anything political in general.

As a child, I remember countless adults advising me with regard to conversation skills to “steer away from Politics and Religion”. How right they were, why didn’t I listen?

In fact, I remember a time when nobody really knew which way anyone else voted because it was considered a private matter. The only people who really knew how a person voted was themselves and the paperboy/girl who delivered the newspaper. From my paper round, I had a good idea who was voting Labour and who voted Tory.

The internet changed all that because it gave everyone a platform.

Let’s Debate

Platforms can be good and platforms can be bad. One platform I created on Facebook was the group called ‘Let’s Debate’.
I created some basic rules, I thought they were reasonable enough, have a look…

RULES
****************

• Any topic is cool…….So long as it’s general, ie not personal to yourself or Specific to a local area.
• Please do not post regional (Hyper-local) topics, please!
• Be respectful please, it doesn’t need to get personal
• Anyone attacking other members needlessly will be WARNED BY ANY of the ADMINS
• Incidents will be reported to Admins. If the behaviour persists the offender WILL be banned.
• Admin decision is final, this is the one thing NOT up for Debate on this board.
• No Racism, Sexism or Homophobia, please.
  (Gender, Race, and Sexuality are, however, valid topics within common decency)
• You must be 16 years old to join this group.
• Each member should try to invite AT LEAST ONE other person.
• You can edit your notification settings by clicking the settings button on the top right of the group. This will prevent your inbox from filling up with unwanted notifications.

I invited lots of friends who had an interest in politics and it began, lighthearted at first, then it developed factions. The whole board became chaotic, with people making outrageous statements and other people feeling attacked and offended. None of which was my intention, so I added admins or moderators, again though things go out of hand when certain members created more factions and schisms.

I had to be the overall authority on this, not a position I relished. We honestly had some great debates on there but in the end, it became complicated. People spent more time phoning each other to talk about other members of the board than was healthy. Something was happening on the board that I’d not bargained for, actual human relationships were developing, almost mirroring real life, imagine a sort of virtual schoolyard if you will.

Many of my friends tend to have left-wing views, I’ve never discriminated and have always had plenty of pals with conservative views too, because nobody is correct about everything all the time, and your politics doesn’t make you a good or a bad person, I think it just reflects your life experience.

Sadly, the left and the right did not get on…and those with more right-wing views were regularly subjected to intense scrutiny and rebuttal of their argument, Sometimes to a point where it became toxic, quite a few people left the group, and they weren’t always those with more conservative views. I hated this and considered shutting the group down numerous times, but never did. At one point I relinquished admin duties for a long while only to return again at a later date because politics is addictive and hard to stay away from.

Over the years though, the group largely fell out of use and became very one-sided, no one posts on there now because we all pretty much agree about the topics. I never wanted to create an echo chamber. Conservative-leaning people won’t join as they see it as a lynch mob, which is a real shame.

I have to take the blame for not running it correctly. I honestly wanted to create a place where we could all debate and learn.

Moving politics into plain sight

After having conversations with a couple of the group’s members who were shall we say ‘very vocal’, they both contended that they prefered to debate politics on their main feed rather than in the group. I argued against this saying that it alienated all those who didn’t want to see it and those who were “on the fence”, against my better judgement though I soon followed suit and began making more political statements on my own wall. This is definately a decision that I regret, and another example where I should have listened to my intuition more.

By changing the nature of my wall, from trivial friendly ‘generic’ human interest posts to those of a more political nature, I widened my audience tenfold but also revealed my politics to people who either didn’t want to know it or didn’t care...some people got sucked in.

Losing friends over stupid stuff

During this time of creating a political maelstrom for no other good reason than wanting to create a bigger debate, I lost friends. I upset people by talking about some of my strongly held beliefs on:

• – Brexit
• – Trump
• – One man’s Terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter
• – Meat is murder
• – ISIS
• – Racism
• – Nationality
• – Halal and Kosher
• -The function of mainstream media

And other incendiary statements,  any of which I’d alluded to here in this post from 2011.

In fact, I’d like to TALK not ARGUE with anyone about these things, but only privately, I cannot bear any more divisive argument!

I fell out with one chap about Brexit, Another about vegetarianism, another about the definition of terrorism, another about the merits of Veganism, and one woman about her public comments on Halal.

Let me be clear here. I’m not blaming those people. They are just as entitled to their view, as I am to mine. It’s just that Facebook facilitated the conflict. It’s not Facebook’s fault either, it’s mine, for being naive about the effects of open debate, and for not recognising that other people can be easily triggered by specific topics.

We have within us the ability to ignore such comments and opinions, we can turn the other cheek or look away. Except, I do not. I have long refused to let what I believe to be bigoted opinions go unchallenged. I was unable to resist…. and had to wade in, and I argue so forcefully and so relentlessly and so mercilessly, subsequently, I lost people.

Maybe, really it’s for the best? Perhaps I don’t need people who hold such opposing views in my life? However, I cannot help thinking though that without debate between opposing positions there can be no understanding or mutual respect and ultimately no compromise.

So, I decided that I was going to delete my Facebook Profile. That was March 2018.

Within a couple of hours, I realised that wasn’t actually possible or practical.

I manage quite a few Facebook pages for businesses, in addition, I get some key updates about running and hobbies etc from Facebook that I can’t get elsewhere.  In the end, I simply stopped posting on my wall and removed my profile picture. I make no secret that I muted all the people whose content was repeatedly irritating me. I’m sure in turn I’m  on many peoples muted lists.

Now, I just read Facebook occasionally, and only post on one or 2 tech-related threads, groups I’m involved with.

Fast forward a few years and in 2023 my feelings haven’t changed that much.  I keep trying with Facebook as it’s a very convenient way to stay in touch with people.  certainly costs a lot less than meeting them in the puc, but….it’s not the same.

Many friends asked me not to leave, saying I was one of the few passionate voices, generally I’ve stepped back a bit and made a conscious effort to tone it down a bit.  I needed my sanity back.

Replying to things I don’t agree with online, was and is toxic.
Getting upset and angry about vile comments, toxic,
sending out strong responses, toxic,pointless, time-wasting and toxic. I

Wasn’t enjoying life because I was angry. In all honesty, I’m still angry. Angry that people stomp off instead of being mature and agreeing to disagree.

Since I changed what I post on Facebook, I feel better, much better, Twitter of (X) well, that’s another ballgame.

Remove Toxic Influence

In conclusion friends, I urge you to remove toxicity from your lives. I’ve been happier and more focused on things that actually matter since reducing the battles on Facebook. You just cannot convert people who are entrenched in their opinions, whether they be left-leaning, right-leaning or on the fence, best to focus on your own journey and wish them well in theirs.

If you like my stuff, don’t forget to follow:
on Instagram @tideswellman