Facebook is a wonderful thing.
It allows you to connect with old friends, as well as with people you have never met.
It enables you to share your interests with others, as well as your opinions, and, for some people, Facebook allows them to examine their entire lives as they post to others.
But you do not have to take a sanity test to be able to post on Facebook, and here is where the latest cautionary tale about the social network comes to this Rant.
On Tuesday, we had our annual Election Day, where qualified voters choose what legislators they would like to represent them in all facets of political life.
This year's election wasn't a major one, like next year's will be, when we all vote for our next President. But it is important to vote, anyway, for whomever you are voting for.
I believe it is our duty to vote, because this is what our forefathers fought for, and this is what people around the world fight for, too.
A poster who I know from my old neighborhood of Rochdale Village, South Jamaica, Queens, New York, put up a post, basically asking who was running this year.
She lives in Brooklyn, and honestly, I don't know who is running in her borough.
So I put up that fact, and also that in Nassau County, where I live, there wasn't much going on, either, with the main race being the district attorney's affair. I urged everyone to vote, and that was that.
I didn't expect to get any response at all from that, but like I have said many times before, once you put something up on Facebook, you are open to not only responses, but brickbats of which you might not have ever expected, or seen before.
Boy, did I get slammed!
Another person from my old neighborhood wrote back that I was being "a smart aleck" with my post, and he also used some very choice four-letter words to describe what I had written.
Well, again, if you put something up on Facebook, you should expect a reply, and yes, I did reply to him.
I told him that I was "dumbfounded" by his response, and I asked him why he put it up.
That is basically it in a nutshell. Nothing else.
Well, did I get creamed by this person!
He responded by putting up separate responses featuring every emoji--those stupid little variations on "smiley faces" that are supposed to replicate your particular emotions--and I mean, he must have put up at least 50 of these messages, one after the other. Maybe more, I wasn't counting.
I sent him a Facebook message about this, and he polluted my Facebook message box with more emojis, and some other choice messages, including those directing me to borderline porn sites.
Yes, all of this for posting about the Nassau DA race!
I ended up sending a Facebook message to the original poster, basically to apologize for starting this person on his madness where he polluted her original post, and she told me that yes, this guy is kind of "out of sorts" and I should just ignore him, which I ended up doing.
But before I did that, I banned him from my personal Facebook account. I will no longer see anything from this person, and lo and behold, once I did that, everything of his was gone, gone, gone--good!
So this is just another cautionary tale.
One, that no matter what you post on Facebook, once the post is up, you should expect a response. Honestly, 99 percent of the time, the response won't be anything to get all bent out of shape over, but sometimes, you will get something out of left field, like what happened to me this time.
Two, that there are nuts on Facebook, people who don't belong on this service, and sometimes, things set them off that appear benign to you, but to others, well, like the person I just described, it makes certain people crazy.
You should be prepared for anything and everything on Facebook. It is the Wild West there, and just about anything and everything goes on that site.
And just to add a little icing to this cake, no, I did not put up who I voted for for Nassau DA, but I will tell you that the person I voted for actually won this post.
Little did the person--or her opponent--know that one little Facebook post about this race would end up causing so much of a commotion in my Facebook world.
I think this person has much more on her plate than to even think about that, and so do I.
You do seem to have that happen a lot on Facebook, don't you?
ReplyDeleteYes, mainly due to people like yourself, who live their lives through social networking. I don't, but when I am attacked, I will fire back. Some people, like yourself, who have never been told 'No" in your life, can't handle it. Too bad. And in this instance, I was told by the person who made the original post that this person was "off center," so it simply justified me getting rid of him. If you don't know how to use Facebook, you should not be on it, and no, to wrap your life up in this thing is not healthy.
ReplyDeleteLarry dear, I have been on Facebook for 6 years now, and have had exactly two situations where I wound up blocking someone or being blocked by someone. You, of course, were one. the other, a guy named Mike, who you may remember from various parties and barbecues. On the other hand, if just the year and a half since I found you on Facebook, you've had nasty run ins with at least three people besides me. The story is always the same -- you did nothing wrong, you were just expressing your opinion, and the other guy was mean and nasty and you had to block him. Has it occurred to you that maybe, just maybe, you share in the responsibility for each of those arguments? No, of course not.
ReplyDeleteAnd that's the problem. Your blog post today tells the whole story. Most people would not think of Facebook as a free-for-all or the Wild West. Manners count, even on Facebook, and if you wouldn't tell it to someone in person, you shouldn't say it on Facebook.
So every time I told you that manner matter, you accused me of trying to censor your opinion.
And when I treated you exactly the same way you treated me, you blocked me and whined to your friends that I was being mean to you.
Man up, Larry, and take some responsibility.
Facebook is not policed at all by its creators, and that is what I meant by Wild West. Anything goes. As you know, there have been rampant anti-Semitic posts on Facebook, and there have also been terrorist threats posted there. Should we let this all go by as if these things aren't there?
ReplyDelete