Yep. I said it.
Facebook is dehumanizing.
Day after day I see people posting their 2 second soundbites to the faceless Facebook army, or as we like to call them "friends". I don't know about you, but my friends don't act the way I see these people acting.
My friends care about me. My friends know that what they say is important. My friends are not glib to me on a daily basis. They don't call me names like "stupid" or "moron" when I give an opinion that is contrary to theirs. If they see something off in me they take care to approach me with love. They value me.
What I see is an increasing amount of demoralizing and dehumanizing comments on Facebook. Someone says something they don't like and BLAH!-- they vomit on them.They don't think about the reaction the other person will have. They don't think about the reactions that ANYONE reading it will have (and chances are there are a ton of people reading it). I suppose they just don't care. All THOSE people are faceless. They are not human with feelings and lives, stresses or baggage. Those people are inconsequential.
Please think. PLEASE. The comments you make are going to real people with faces and feelings., They could be having a bad day, or their husband left them, or they were abused, or... They could be people who need encouragement. There are no simple issues. Life is complex and we ARE connected.
The next time you go to answer someone on FB--before you click a single key-- ask yourself if you were standing face to face with this person would say it and how would you say it? If you really care about what you are saying, you will want it to effect positive change. I don't change or consider rude people. And if you aren't into effecting positive change, you just want to be mean or cruel. Imagine if we committed to lifting people up with our words on Facebook instead of tearing them down? What you speak to in a man rises up. Speak joy! Speak peace! Speak life! There is no room in the world for poison, bigotry and hatred. Not in the world I hope to live in anyway.
Facebook is dehumanizing.
Day after day I see people posting their 2 second soundbites to the faceless Facebook army, or as we like to call them "friends". I don't know about you, but my friends don't act the way I see these people acting.
My friends care about me. My friends know that what they say is important. My friends are not glib to me on a daily basis. They don't call me names like "stupid" or "moron" when I give an opinion that is contrary to theirs. If they see something off in me they take care to approach me with love. They value me.
What I see is an increasing amount of demoralizing and dehumanizing comments on Facebook. Someone says something they don't like and BLAH!-- they vomit on them.They don't think about the reaction the other person will have. They don't think about the reactions that ANYONE reading it will have (and chances are there are a ton of people reading it). I suppose they just don't care. All THOSE people are faceless. They are not human with feelings and lives, stresses or baggage. Those people are inconsequential.
The next time you go to answer someone on FB--before you click a single key-- ask yourself if you were standing face to face with this person would say it and how would you say it? If you really care about what you are saying, you will want it to effect positive change. I don't change or consider rude people. And if you aren't into effecting positive change, you just want to be mean or cruel. Imagine if we committed to lifting people up with our words on Facebook instead of tearing them down? What you speak to in a man rises up. Speak joy! Speak peace! Speak life! There is no room in the world for poison, bigotry and hatred. Not in the world I hope to live in anyway.
I'm with you, 100%! I held off on getting a FB for a long time until a dear old friend who lives 3000 miles away talked me into it. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but before I got the hang of it, I had several unpleasant run-ins of the sort you mention, mostly with people from high school that I haven't seen in 15 years and a distant relative who is a little more polital than I was aware of at the time.
ReplyDeleteMy husband calls it a most unnatural form of communication and doesn't want a FB. Staring at an ambivalent computer screen, with fingers that can type faster than a person can think results in so many unkind things said that a person would never dare speak to another person's face. It's awful.
I worked on my settings and made them very strict to where I am only sharing with my real friends and family--people whom I mostly see every week anyway. I'd much rather connect with my friends over a cup of coffee at the kitchen table.
Good post! I'm so glad to know I'm not the only one out there who feels like FB can be truly ANTI-social. ;)
Yeah. I can think of a few "unfriends" that I would like to see face to face. (You know who you are, punks).
ReplyDeleteThank you for pointing out the inhumanity of digital relationships. Kind of go right along with the "delete" function, no?