Timely! Today I unfriended an old high school friend who became super conservative. I put up with all his Palin-loving, Clinton-bashing updates during the election, but when he used his status update to complain about the repeal of the Global Gag Rule, I was done.

Same here, only for me it was on inauguration day after he posted some similar tripe (plus noting how “gracious” or “classy” AWOL was compared to those liberal ingrates during the swearing in ceremony) as his status update and I started a flame war among a bunch of his friends in the comments by pointing out how delusional they are.

I was a moderate wingnut in college. But hey, give me some credit. I was practically breastfed on Rush Limbaugh, conservative talk radio, and giant religious/ex-gay billboards (a.k.a. the Piedmont of SC). But once I was through college and I had lived a little of my own life, I realized that I was actually a liberal and that I really always had been, strangely enough. I just had to overcome my own privileged life and naivete to realize it.

Man, college would’ve been much more fun if I would’ve been a liberal first, though. Damn.

I’m in touch via Facebook with several friends from elementary school who I had completely lost touch with. I have been very pleasantly surprised that they all turned out to be liberal (cause in elementary school, there’s really no way to know). Not just I voted for Obama liberal, but One Million Against Prop 8 liberal. My husband had the unpleasant experience of having to delist a guy who was a pretty good friend from middle school/early high school who insisted on sending him racist “jokes” every other day after they got back in touch.

Totally unrelated Facebook thought: I’m friends on Facebook with two people who I work with. They are both people who I genuinely like and enjoy spending time with outside of work, though not my closest, bestest friends, by any means. Anyway, I was on one of their pages recently, and I saw that this person was friends with literally every single person in my place of employment who has a Facebook page, including our boss, our boss’s boss, and our boss’s boss’s boss. And really, I like all those people (the bosses) well enough as bosses, but they’re still our fucking bosses. What on earth would possess someone to do that?

How timely as I just had the exact opposite experience.  Just found out one older friend who attended a conservative protestant church was excited and happy President Obama got elected.

I haven’t dumped anyone yet, mostly because the few I did have run-ins with during the election have decided not to attack me on my wall anymore. They were old fraternity brothers—I’ve changed more than a little in the intervening ten years—and this is pretty much the only contact I still have with them, so I don’t feel too bad about it.

That said, I would. I almost did when a former student of mine put up an image of Obama as Hitler, but instead, I called him out on his wall, and he not only pulled the image, he apologized publicly for it. Sometimes they can learn, you know?

Gah.  Yes this has happened to me.  A comment from a college friend, firmly entrenched in religious conservatism, lamenting the lifting of the global gag rule.

I followed the advice given on unreasonable faith’s blog on how to stump anti-choicers.  The result?  Utter silence.

A guy I see at work sometimes sent me a friend request recently. His page is full of Reagan quotes and fearmongering about how Obama is already setting terrorists free. (He has an image of Obama as Robin Hood with hammer-and-sickle accessories.) I really did not need to know that, and it’s going to be harder to work with him. I list my political affiliation as “crypto-socialist” which I would hope would scare a few of the crazies away.

Ugh.

dan_ffto:

Thanks so much for that link. Gold. Pure gold.

I’m posting this thread to my Facebook page.

*knock on wood* I am lucky to not have any openly butthurt conservatives on my Facebook list. Many of my friends are fellow Unitarian Universalists, who aren’t exactly Bush fans as a rule; I’ve got a few former coworkers, and the rest are basically former band-following friends. I don’t keep in touch with many people from high school, and no one from college.

Meanwhile, one of my father’s coworkers is passing out stickers that say “Don’t Blame Me, I Voted For McCain.” I think they’re enjoying this new age of martyrdom….

pepito - what? Does your colleague not realise that Robin Hood is the hero of those stories and the Sheriff of Nottingham is the bad guy? I boggle, I really do.

dan_ffto,

I’m working my way through that thread too.

It’s kind of depressing actually, because the predominant views of the early posts (there are currently over a thousand, after just one week!) are anti-choice of various stripes, and they claim not to be stumped. A common theme is the idea that “abortion is its own punishment.”

There is a clearly a general need to raise the level of thought on the subject.

I like to think that actually people know better on some level or other, but are afraid to speak, or even think it out too clearly, lest they be reviled by their neighbors.

So that’s a way of hoping my fellow people are smarter than they look, but only by supposing they are terrorized.

Which is pretty much my story and I’m sticking to it.

A common theme is the idea that “abortion is its own punishment.”

Holy crap. They should be given an honorary Ph D in hypocrisy.

Not to say you’re making this Auguste because I’m sure you’re not but I have to tell, in my little corner of facebook, everyone I come into contact with one exception is a flaming, pagan liberal.  This “we miss george” bullshit is definitely province of some other part of the world I don’t, thankfully, inhabit.

Oh yeah, I dropped the two jesus freak girls because every morning they were thanking jesus for breakfast and thanking jesus for the morning and thanking jesus the dog could take a shit.  It just got tiring.

Change your friends list.  The world will seem a brighter place.

I think I’d rather enjoy having an image of Obama as Robin Hood with a hammer and sickle. If only I could believe he really was that much of a leftist.

The only far right person I friended is the mom from the cool family on The Amazing Race family edition. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. I just ignored her McCain stuff. My account was hijacked a couple of weeks ago, so I’ve missed any inauguration shenanigans, but if I ever get back on, I won’t unfriend her. She’s my wingnut thermometer.

Having gone to a mega-suburban high school in a crimson state, I would be surprised if somebody I played Pony League baseball with (cough) years ago wasn’t a wingnut. I only cut one or two people out when their updates indicated some sort of severe thought disorder (i.e. prayerfulness).

He’s a silent guardian, a watchful protector…a Dark Knight.

What a sad, sad, fucker. I can imagine him breaking down in tears as he gets to the “dark knight” part.

I’ve reconnected with lots of high school and college friends on Facebook.

The college friends have all turned out to be some flavr of leftist or progressive.

The high school friends are all over the place - left, right and center. I am pleased that the people I liked best in high school are mostly on the left, but there have been a few surprises. One guy that I was sure was gay is now very active in an ultra-fundamentalist, dominionist church. But there have been some good surprises from the conservatives; on inauguration day one of them posted that he was praying for Obama to do a good job.

Most of my friends on Facebook from high school are totally “May God bless you and your family” after every post (my college friends are mostly (70-75%) liberal or democrat). I have considered unfriending some of them, but a couple of them really are my best friends from high school and we have never fallen out of touch. They know where I stand politically & religiously, so they don’t push me w/jokes or prayers. I think the blessing is just a part of their signature.

but there have been a few surprises. One guy that I was sure was gay is now very active in an ultra-fundamentalist, dominionist church.

Not surprising at all, really.  Repression does bad things to people.  There was this one guy I knew in high school who I was certain - and am certain to this day - was gay, but he dealt with it by becoming a deep and vehement believer in his parents’ fundy church. 

Sometimes I still wonder what happened to that poor schlub.

I don’t defriend those with conservative beliefs (unless they’re really odious and not really a friend in the first place).

During the inauguration I customized my page so that the status updates of conservatives on my friends list were at the top. Why? Schadenfreude, my friend. I’m a sick, sick person who gets off on the lamentations of my political enemies.

So is Facebook cooler than MySpace?

I joined MySpace a while ago just to see what the “cool kids” were up to.  I rarely visit, though I have remet some friends on it.

I never Facebooked b/c it seemed like more of the same—like Linked In vs. Plaxo vs. etc.

Did I pick the nerdy one?

They’re both pretty nerdy, Caren, but Facebook seems like the place the grown-up nerds gravitate to more than Myspace. I think. YMMV, and for me it’s mostly about how GODAWFUL most peoples’ Myspace profiles are to look at.

Myspace started out with open enrollment, and facebook started out only available to college students (in ‘04/‘05) and then opened up enrollment later (‘07?) . As such it has a critical mass of older Millenials, and as you know by now, we define cool.

As far as I know, facebook offers fewer page customization options, so as Auguste says, most of the pages there are at least readable.

A really old friend of mine, like from first grade, is very religious, so I’ve often found myself flinching whenever politics or social issues come up.  It turns out that she’s totally liberal to the point of opposing Prop 8.

I had to unfriend someone from my childhood who posted a celebratory Happy Birthday Robert E. Lee! status message on MLK day, the day before the inauguration of our first black president.  This was hardly the first sign of wingnuttery, but it was the straw that broke the camel’s back.  It’s one thing to be an adamant McCain/Palin koolaid drinker.  It’s something else entirely to nostalgize slavery when the rest of the country is celebrating a major step forward in American race relations…

Oh Jesus (and I say this advisedly!), this describes my Facebook experience to a T. I keep adding old friends, on the off chance that some of them will be liberal, and a very very few have turned out to be. I suppose, considering how I grew up, that I should be surprised that most of my school friends are all sad at Obama’s election. But really, I’d hoped that at least a few of my extended family would be liberal. But, well…not really.

I have had a few stealth conversations with the one or two unexpected liberals on my friends’ list, though. (Most of the friends I’ve made *since* high school are as liberal as I am or moreso—they’ve actually helped me develop my progressive conscience—but not my chilchood friends.)

Haven’t dropped very many of them yet, mostly because it’s nice to know when they marry and sprog and move various places. And I hold out a vain hope that *my* status messages may possibly help change their lives. I know, it’s silly, but hey…gotta try. The long-running debate with the only one I seriously engage is currently at the point where she admits that violence against gay people is a bad thing…..

*should not be surprised. *facepalm* 2 am, sleep now.