De-Friending
Today Facebook asked me if I wanted to become a fan of "Defending Marriage according to Jesus", despite the fact that I have "Legalize Gay Marriage" as a cause I support. I found out which "friend" was a member and once it became clear that she hadn't "become a fan" ironically, I de-friended her.
She wasn't a real friend to begin with, just a casual acquaintance of Cindy's who we see at parties. But now I'm wondering whether I'm being inconsistent for not deleting several other Facebook "friends" who I'm almost certain have similar views. Some of them I'm confident have even more disagreeable views than this girl who described herself as liberal. I guess I just don't want to be too pro-active in weeding out the people who shouldn't be my friends.
That's not to say that I'm violating the Categorical imperative or anything like that. I wouldn't be offended if someone de-friended me because they didn't agree with the politically-charged links I post. If anything it would be a bit of a relief.
posted by Nick @ 5:57 pm
4 comments
4 Comments:
What about "real life" friends who hold similar views?
That's why I'm slightly worried that I might be inconsistent. I could say that the difference is that I've never heard you, Lara actively campaigning against others' liberties. But I'm not sure that that's the real reason.
I suspect that my real motive is more to do with trying to measure friendships. I mean, I barely know this girl and she won't even notice the Facebook connection missing so there's no harm done at all. (Naturally I'll still say hi at parties.) In terms of loss of friendship, at the other end of the spectrum I share a real friendship with Larissa and in between there's classmates with whom I disagree but we try to get along (I'd like to have more than a nodding acquaintance with them but I rarely socialise with those classmates).
The reason I went to the trouble of writing this on the blog is because I want to work through the question of whether it's acceptable to have higher expectations of future friends than current ones or be more willing to shun acquaintances than friends. Shouldn't people be judged by what they do, regardless of how well you know and like them?
A couple of months ago I thought about people's reactions to my link sharing and I put a message on my profile telling people not to add me if they found my opinions offensive. (I'm quite sincere in saying that I wouldn't mind people deciding not to add me for that reason.) But then I started to ask myself what the difference is between not adding a new friend, not accepting a friend request and removing someone from a friend list. At first I thought it was some sort of Jewish sabbath distinction between active and passive agency. Now I'm starting to think that it's more because by knowing people better we are better able to -- not make excuses for them but -- understand this one opinion of theirs that you disagree within a larger context of opinions that you don't find so offensive. I think that's why friendship ameliorates differences of opinion, at least if we think these things through.
So what's the moral of the story? I think I was right because there's no likelihood that I'd ever get to know that girl well enough to even accept that that's a reasonable position for her. Still, I should certainly not get rid of any classmates that I might not know very well, as there's always the chance to get to know them better.
The digital world does make us "complexify" these things. In this case with this enter the casual friendship status of facebook et al, usually with any number of folks we don't really talk to, or feel we should. But still, its also nice.
I think we can, and even should, maintain a friendship with people of different views - within reason. Cutting people off purely based on their opinion is verging toward fundamentalism, perhaps even xenophobia. Sometimes their opinion will be offensive - but perhaps we ought to focus on how we get along more than how we don't? But if you don't really get along on any level, then there is no point trying to be a friend. Or "friend" for that matter.
I agree. There are several reasons why I'm friends with people. The good outweighs the bad, and I'm sure this is how they justify being friends with me.
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