When people post very opinionated, negative things on FB, do you jump into the debate or leave it alone?

I leave it alone. Facebook has my name attatched to it and some day an ultra conservative future employer may be reading my profile when I’m applying for a job. Always remember: if you’re not paying for a service you’re the product, not the customer.

I don’t like to leave stuff like that unchallenged, because I feel like that is a kind of tacit approval. However, I also don’t have friends who routinely post things that I find offensive – why would they even be on my Facebook to begin with? So, occasionally it happens with friends-of-friends, and I usually make a short statement like, “I’m not going to get into a sparring match with the friend of a friend, but what you are saying is untrue because of X.” And then I let it go. And sometimes send a message to the friend to the explain why I bothered.

Under no circumstances would I post a response like “What about Bush?” because it isn’t really an argument, and just opens the thread up to tit-for-tat nastiness. I will only directly address the untruth of what the other person said.

Precisely why I’m not on FB. Too many people ranting about too many things I don’t care to be ranted at about.

I don’t like to get into it on Facebook. You’re never going to convince anybody – the people who post those things have their mind shut to differing views – so the only thing you’re going to accomplish is fostering resentment. I don’t mind that on anonymous internet boards, but I like to avoid it with my “real life” friends.

I’ve only broken this personal rule once, with a pretty close friend of mine who has very different opinions from me, but who I also know to be open minded and respectful. After question 3 (legal medical marijuana) passed in MA, he posted something about how our state is going down the tubes. I couldn’t help but share some of the experiences I’ve had where I might have avoided some grueling medical problems with the help of medical marijuana, had it been available to me. I didn’t expect to convince him, but I did know he would be receptive to what I had to say. It was a positive experience overall.

I tend to steer clear of Facebook debate.

That’s what Fluther is for. I never bother with that stuff on Facebook.

I have some very conservative friends who post some pretty inflammatory stuff. I can handle a lot but when they started attacking all Muslims I had enough so I posted this status.
Just to let my friends know, I love you all regardless of your politics but I will have to unfriend people who post Islamaphobic statuses or photos. I love my Muslim friends and the ignorance displayed about an entire group of people breaks my heart. Blaming all Muslim people for the acts of a few wackos is like blaming Jesus for what Timothy McVey did. God bless you all.

If anyone has continued to be THAT bad they probably unfriended me and I haven’t noticed.

I remove them from my feed and ignore all their posts.

I don’t use Facebook for debates. Facebook is a place for me to share happy moments and to seek support when times are hard. I hate the drama that follows politics on Facebook. I ignore it and I usually block the repeat offenders from my news feed.

If it’s a one time thing, I hide their post.

If it’s someone I really like and can somehow look past their opinions I alter the settings of what I see from them in my newsfeed.

If it’s someone I don’t care much about, or don’t know in real life, I unfriend.

I leave it alone. It never changes, and there is nothing anyone can say that will change it.

Debating shit on faceyuk is much like asking a herd of cows to complete a jigsaw for you, puzzling & one giant fuck up after another…don’t go there.

I leave it alone. I don’t want to argue on FB. It seems so pointless and false. If you want to argue with someone, you must have to guts to do it while looking them in the eye. Otherwise you have no credibility.

When I was in elementary school, I was friends with Gordon. We stopped being friends right after 6th grade. I accepted a friendship request from him a couple years ago on FB. Now, he posts anti-Obama rhetoric all the time. Mostly, I stay away from it, mostly, but sometimes he posts something so angry and hurtful that it infuriates me, and I have to respond. Those exchanges never end well, and I am sure I will end up deleting him from my list of friends. The most recent example was a declaration that the Sandy Hook massacre was a staged government act, and that no one was really killed, and that all the parents are paid actors pretending to suffer.
Some people like their guns too God damned much.

@filmfann – One thing I don’t get about that Sandy Hook Hoax thing is that it would be nearly impossible to do something like that in this decade. I mean the school most likely has a website with a list of teachers. If it were a hoax, all of the fake dead teachers wouldn’t have matching names. And if they had matching names, a living person with that name would have spoken out and said “Hey! I’m not dead!”

I mean, to make a hoax on that magnitude, they would have had to build the school from scratch. And even then, there would be people from the town saying “I don’t remember that school existing before it was on the news.” or seeing the parents of killed kids—wouldn’t people say “Hey, these people don’t actually live in our very small town where we know everyone”

Sorry it’s a little off topic, but to believe the Sandy Hook Massacre was a hoax—it may have been possible to do something like that 50 years ago or so ,but with the media the way it is today, I don’t think you could pull it off.

I think there are people now saying that the Boston Marathon massacre was also a hoax. Another bit of ridiculousness.

I try to find a way to mock them.

The fellow jellies may be surprised to know that I tend to leave it alone…on Facebook, anyways. I have a few people on mine that fit the description of your friend and it gets under my skin like no other, but getting into a debate on Facebook usually isn’t worth the trouble. I’ve left a few comments here and there if something posted is completely incorrect, but not if it’s opinion-based.

@keobooks None of the ‘hoax’ things make any sense, which tells us that those people are disconnected from reality.

It really broke my heart the other day when my 21 year old niece shared This on her page. From anyone else I would have ignored it but my first comment was
“Arikia…..”
Then some guy posted “Question authority!!”
I said, “We’ll, yeah! I agree! But you don’t have to make stuff up!”
Arika said, “We all have a right to our opinion and that is mine.” (That’s when I almost cried…this is my sister’s daughter.)
I said, “But what is the point? Are they saying they got the wrong guy, or they knew about it before hand? It was a little confusing. I couldn’t quite follow their logic.”
No response to that.

(What WERE they trying to suggest, anyway?)

I rarely even look at my newsfeed, because everyone is stupid except for me. :D

MIlo here: Other than trying to chivy Mama-cakes’ Blue to get off his haunches and exercise more, I mind my own business.

Well, I don’t play Obama vs. Bush. I do play Tea Party Lies vs. Reality.

@Dutchess_III

Facts are not subject to opinion, nor are lies protected by “Well this is my opinion”.

I mean, it can be your opinion that a person looks like a heroin addict. The fact may be that they have cancer of the stomach. And then your opinion makes you look like an ass because you accused a cancer patient of being a heroin addict.

Yes, question authority. You should question everything, not just authority.

If you’re blindly agreeing with a conspiracy theorist, you’re just as blind as if you were blindly agreeing with the authority figures.

@Seek_Kolinahr Facts are not subject to opinion, nor are lies protected by “Well this is my opinion”.

I wish everyone understood that.

That quote of @Seek_Kolinahr needs to go down in history!

@Seek_Kolinahr, I’m quoting you on Facebook.

I’m not even friends with you on Facebook but I was still able to tag you. :-)

Let’s see if I can beat ya to it, @Judi!

I used to debate them more, now I let about 90% of those go without me commenting. If they are calling names and saying outlandish things they are a lost cause anyway. If they are just stating a conservative view, but are not offensive, I might respond with my take and some facts on whatever they are talking about. Sometimes liberals say outlandish things also, and that bothers me just as much, once in a while I respond.

How are we not friends on Facebook? /seek.kolinahr Friend me.

Luckily, all my friends on FB are leftwing so they never post obnoxious things. One friend who was obnoxious in other ways, unfriended me a while ago.

There, found you. ^_^ You tagged my alt account, which was a way to escape tea party family members during the election. I haven’t logged in to that one in forever!

Wow..I posted Seeks quote on fb. Almost immediately got a message from a friend that said,

“the quote you posted..was that from jane miller? the facts are not subject to opinion thing.you should probably delete me too.

Jomp back! It had nothing remotely to do with that friend! I ‘splained that to her. Turns out Jane had deleted her. I asked why, and she said, “Because I believe in the 2nd amendment.” Things that make you go hmmmm. Yep, one of those people I enjoy talking to…but have to ignore her anti-Obama posts. She’s not rabid, though.

I used to debate more on FB, but I’ve dialed back from that. If it’s a younger person, I still engage (respectfully), because I know there is room for change. If it’s an older person, I just ignore/hide them. I don’t have any FB friends that post really hateful stuff…if I did, I’d probably unfriend them.

Now if someone posts something that is flat out false, I can’t let it slide. I don’t try to get into pissing matches, but I’ll just quietly drop the evidence that refutes their claim into the conversation.

I don’t know if anyone I’m friends with posts stuff like that; I’ve honestly never debated on Facebook before in my years of using it…

I asked my friend (the one that thought it was targeting her Seeks quote) what she thought of the quote. She said, ”i have mixed opinion. If that is what someone believes..who am i to correct them. Facts ARE subject to opinion..the sky make be blue in fact but to a color blind person it may appear green so from their perspective and actual point of view the Actuality to Them is that the sky is green – there fore to them the FACT is the sky is green as for lies being an opinion this is a quandry it is hard to prove an item is a lie = without facts to back it up and Facts as you can see are subjectional

^^^Oy.

You have your opinion, your idea on a subjuect and the ohter has an idea/opinion on that same subjuect.
If both walk away enlightened and with a newer persepective then it was worth hearing them out.
Debating is giving each their moment to explain their point of view, and deliberating on that.
Unfortunately some people try to ‘push’ their adgenda onto the other…causing strife.

@Dutchess_III What the? You should delete her now… not because she thinks facts are subjective, but because she thinks punctuation is optional.

…And because she thinks subjectional ia a real word.

@gailcalled Good point. My eyes started bleeding before I reached the end, so I missed that.

I have a couple of times but I seriously have sworn off now. I like facebook because it keeps me somewhat up to date with friends all over the world. People don’t send me an email every time they see a pretty bird in their yard, but they post a pic and that is fun. Same goes for friends with dogs and kids and the like.

For that purpose, I love it, but I either hide or delete those who use it as a political, religious, etc. platform.

I enjoyed our frog pic swap @rooeytoo, We must do it again. :)

@jonsblond – I moved to the cold, I haven’t seen a frog since!!! Plenty of pretty birds and gorgeous trees though. Do you want to trade those pics, heheheh!

Why is it that extreme conservatives, almost without fail, can’t seem to put together a coherent sentence? Although I want to give her the benefit of the doubt, and assumed she was trying to type on her phone.

If their minds worked coherently, they wouldn’t be extreme conservatives.

The same could be said about extremist muslims, christians, etc. etc. etc. Extremism is always scary in any person in any direction.

Only once – an old, one-time close friend living and teaching English in Japan kept posting updates about how he and the other teachers disciplined some of their students, such as stepping on their genitals and throwing them through doors. He posted these in a jovial way, like he thought it was funny, and got many “likes” and positive comments. I left it alone until my brother (who is somewhat in awe of this friend, and has a bit of a mentor-mentee thing going on with him) “liked” one, and then I felt compelled to say something, and publicly. So I commented, “John, I find this post troubling. The events you describe sound like child abuse to me.”

My comment infuriated a Japanese friend of my friend’s, who proceeded to inform me that I was a bleeding-heart American liberal who didn’t know what she was talking about. I debated him for a bit but left when it became uncivil. The most disappointing part of the whole thing is that my friend never responded to my comment even privately, and I am now quite uneasy about keeping him as a friend.

@Seek_Kolinahr A fellow jelly made this and posted it on Facebook, and it reminded me of your post up there, and this discussion: http://i.imgur.com/P4AdCwY.jpg

That is an interesting cartoon, but the problem is that one person’s opinion of what is knowledgeable and accurate is another’s lunatic fringe. If you listen to one news source, their reporting is gospel and the next could be completely opposite and yet think they have the gospel. I think democracy allows all to have their own opinions based on what they consider accurate information and never the twain shall meet. Who is to judge? We all gravitate to what supports our individual thoughts

@rooeytoo – television journalists are not a source of information, I don’t care if it’s Fox, MSNBC, or BBC. sure, it’s a nice way to learn about an interesting topic and get started on further research, but that further research has to happen.

For example, everything I know about the animal known as the Mantis shrimp came from an IFLS post and the subsequent The Oatmeal comic. While I now know of the existence of what is probably a pretty cool animal, I do not feel knowledgeable on the topic. I require further research to corroborate the trivia granted to me by the aforementioned pop science blogs.

@Seek_Kolinahr – as long as you are relying on a source other than your own 2 eyes and ears, you are getting a subjective opinion. I know 2 + 2 = 4 and that is not subjective, but opinions on politics or anything other than an absolute are written to a slant in one direction or the other. What you say is truth depends on how you choose to see it and what you choose to read. Statistics can be manipulated to suit your purpose, relevant points omitted, the list goes on.

Correct. That is why it is imperative to look at multiple sources, from various viewpoints, and get as close to the source material as possible before arriving at a decision. Watching one MSNBC video article does not good research make.

As @augustlan ‘s picture says, “Everyone is entitled to an opinion, but some opinions are more valid than others.” The ones that are more valid are based in facts and evidence. Facts and evidence are not subject to opinion. The truth is there, whether one chooses to believe it or not.

@Seek_Kolinahr It should also be said that some sources that have proven highly unreliable in the past should be viewed with greater skepticism than ones that have upheld their journalistic integrity. I find PBS to do an excellent job of focusing on facts and less on sensationalist tactics.

Some news sources tend to contradict themselves depending on the subject being reported, not applying their stated principles consistently. That is a very different thing from having an opinion—it’s the difference between journalism and propaganda.

@gorillapaws Definitely true. I would not, for example, consider consulting an astrologer before deciding whether to take a new job or move to a new country. The fact that some people still do so astonishes me.

@Seek_Kolinahr, even Nancy Regan brought astrologers into the White House .

And it is all subjective, what is a “reliable” source to one is trash to another. You can argue all you want about sources, but it is still subjective which source is the reliable one, it all depends on how you want to see the big picture!

Well, to a small extent maybe – but reliability is, by and large, a quantifiable thing, based on factors like systematic investigation and presentation of data, thorough and accurate sourcing, peer-reviews, history of past reliability, etc.

I think you can have the most accurate sourcing available and the way you present it can slant it anyway you want it to go. And the listeners choose which slant suits their ideology. Peer reviews is by nature subjective, past reliability again reliable based subjective judgement.

Sure, one can definitely attribute bias to a really large group of well-qualified people. But doing so would appear, in general, to propound one of those pesky less-valid opinions.

This is so circular, my well qualified is determined by my bias, there simply are no absolutes. Your pesky less valid judgement is based on your bias!

Ok. My bias that some researchers with advanced degrees – from, let’s say, Harvard – are well qualified has nothing to do with reality, and the people walking around in the street outside my window are automatons. Why not?

If your Harvard guy has a grant from a large corp. and that does happen, they are funded by someone, then there is your bias. He wants to insure there is another grant after this one, so which way is he going to swing? Smart scientists said thalidomide was good, however…....
And having degrees does not automatically make anyone an expert. Given enough time and resources, anyone can get them. So you believe your Harvard guy, and those who are not necessarily impressed by letters after one’s name will believe whom they choose. And just out of curiosity how many degrees did Steve Jobs have?

@rooeytoo What about a source that routinely violates its own internal consistency?

You really don’t believe that some sources are objectively better at reporting the facts than others?

@rooeytoo

If I want to know how a star is formed and dies, and I ask Neil DeGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist, he’ll explain the life cycle of a star. How it is born, and how if it’s the right kind of star, some day the core of the star will turn to iron, and the entire thing will collapse and explode, causing a supernova. And he will be able to show hard evidence from which those conclusions were drawn.

If I ask Kent Hovind the same question, he’ll say “God put the stars there on the fourth day, and they’ll be there forever, because the Bible says so.” And when I ask about supernovae which have been observed in recorded history, he’ll sputter something about God wanting us to have extra-pretty light for a while.

Which is the more reliable source?

@gorillapaws – no I don’t believe that but that is what others are saying. I don’t think there is anyone who cannot be influenced on a subject that is subjective. @Seek_Kolinahr – we went from discussing the correctness of news reporting to astrophysics????

We were talking about some sources being more reliable than others.

One is based on interpretation of so called facts, the other theoretically is scientific so called facts, I should think you would be the first to point out the difference.

And, we’re done here.

Well thank goodness you have finally seen the light! And I have a Yale scientist who has information from an impeccable source that the light exists. Her theories are supported by Fox News.

Not if you’re blind it doesn’t!

Then you feel the heat from the light. I have a scientist from Princeton who can prove that with scientific data.

My point is…just because you can’t see it (or don’t understand it, can’t fathom is, whatever) doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

BOY! As I said, I usually stay out of it, but I had to respond to one just now. It is the daughter of a friend of mine (who home schooled for a couple of years religious reasons) It makes me ill to see young people subscribing to old, mindless shit. Just in case you can’t see it, she posted this

Here is the conversation that followed

(>>>Me) Valerie Henson Vogler Billionis Why?

Tiffany Because I find it nice when a man takes charge and knows what I like:)

Valerie Henson Vogler Billionis Sometimes, yeah.

Tiffany I’d be happy as June clever (beavers mom) staying at home raising my kids:) ( not working out side the home) sadly in today Society that’s not something u can do even as a two income home. I like the time when being a stay at home mom was a job, and we didn’t have all this women’s rights crap. Just my opinion on things

Valerie Henson Vogler Billionis I stayed at home. So did your Mom. They said the same thing then…that it wasn’t feasible then. It was, but we had to be willing to settle for a little less, which I was fine with. So was your Mom. You can do it too.

Valerie Henson Vogler Billionis Wait…Did you just say women’s rights were “crap?”

(No response to that so far. She has a mixed race baby…the father, who she isn’t married to, is black. I find that funny, considering her religious upbringing and her obviously antiquated opinions.)

She still hasn’t responded to my last question. Today I thought of this and posted it on that same thread:

“Tiff~ This caused me to remember when I owned the mower shop from 2002–2006. (40 years ago I would have been laughed out of the bank for going to ask for a business loan. Especially a business loan for a mower shop because I’m a woman. But this women’s rights crap came along and today, for the most part we’re treated as equally as the men… usually.) Anyway, the shop was an extremely male-oriented environment. Most of the time I was in the office keeping the records, but sometimes, if we were busy, I’d go back and help the guys, sharpening chains, tuning up push mowers. It’s not rocket science. But there was this one customer in particular, an older guy from the generation before mine, who just LOST it if he saw me in the back working on a mower! He would literally pull me away and say “This is no kind of work for a woman!” He was just adamant.
I didn’t say anything, just kind of shook my head and rolled my eyes when he wasn’t looking, and when he left I told my husband and our other mechanic, basically “All his lawn mowers are mine!” I could command that because I was the boss. When he brought something in, they’d give it to me.
It just cracked me up the way he ranted and raved about what a good job the “guys” did on his equipment! If he’d ever found out it was me, we probably would have lost a customer. He never got that Woman’s Rights Crap memo.”

I’m kinda hoping that she’ll ask why my husband didn’t keep the books and I do all the mechanic work. That will give me a chance to say “You know. Good question. I have an aptitude for mechanics. In middle school they gave us these aptitude tests. My highest score, at 98, was in engineering. However, I was strongly discouraged from taking shop classes because I was a girl, so I never did.
Rick, on the other hand, has been in to mechanics since his dad handed him a wrench when he was old enough to work one.
Different world, and one that I’m sure is hard for you to imagine.”

She has all those benefits that woman in previous generations worked so HARD to secure for her, and she doesn’t even know what those benefits are. She takes them for granted. Calls them “crap.”

Sorry. I’m still angry at her upbringing.