This article by Ann Friedman for New York Magazine begins by focusing on the presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton as a polarizing force, even among likely political allies. But Friedman’s point isn’t politics per se, it’s friendship. Specifically, she offers thoughts on the effect Facebook might have on friendships once politics enters the equation. And it seems to me that politics always enters the equation — certainly far more often on social media than it typically does in face-to-face social interactions. In many real life situations (e.g. the work environment), I think we still adhere to the old rule that says, “Don’t discuss religion or politics in polite company.” But on Facebook, Man, we just have at it, don’t we? And to Friedman’s point, friends with whom we assume a political alliance will invariably reveal some annoying heterodoxy that not only disappoints but even produces rancor that might never have revealed itself without this platform.
Friedman reminds me that I’ve wondered for some time about the effect of Facebook on friendships and family relationships. When my wife and I first joined the network, it was particularly fun because we’re both alumni of the same, small, slightly dysfunctional college with a gaggle of friends who are like extended family to us. We splurged on an instantaneous connecting spree, exciting as a scavenger hunt, unearthing friends we hadn’t seen or spoken to in more than a decade. It was great. At first. But after the initial rush wore off, Facebook felt a little bit like the school reunion that wouldn’t end or like having a hundred house guests who wouldn’t go home. A brief period of recalibrating the role of this new social environment in our lives was necessary.
When it comes to friends and politics, we don’t traditionally relate to one another by first standing on soap boxes and affirming some strongly held belief. Imagine showing up to a party carrying a big poster of Hillary Clinton with words printed on it saying “Unfriend me now if you don’t support this woman for President.” Then, everyone in the room can align themselves, start squabbling, and eventually disintegrate into schisms within both the pro and the anti-Hillary sides. This is not only a total buzzkill for the party host, but is also amusingly futile considering the only tangible action any individual in the room can really take is a single vote in one direction or the other for the candidate. No, we don’t generally behave like this in real life, but it’s more or less how things go down on Facebook. And maybe that’s a good thing.
Let’s face it, the evil geniuses who invented this country have got to be grinning from on high and laying round-the-clock bets while watching the intellectual cage match they created. America is custom-designed to foster argument, so maybe the tech-utopian view that platforms like Facebook are a positive extension of that principle is correct. If these forums are used to truly engage in discussion, then maybe it’s better to see our friends reveal more diversity in their politics, even if discovering one another’s peccadillos might lead to chilling relationships. On the other hand, those evil geniuses also designed a republic that was meant to move rather slowly on policy because in that stateliness is relative stability. By contrast, social media engagement tends to fuel radical (meaning spontaneous not subversive) and fleeting reaction.
For whatever reason (and I suspect it’s mostly due to the fact that social media is designed for sharing things other people say), political chatter is not only more common online than it has been in pre-cyber social environments, but it is absolutely dominant if my own feed is any indication. Nearly all of my friends are left leaning; and I would say that a significant amount of the political stories that make it into my newsfeed contain headlines about something radical that was reportedly said or done by someone on the extreme right. “Gay Marriage Will Destroy Migratory Patterns of Bald Eagle,” says Indiana pastor. And you just should not click on that stuff because if American politics teaches you anything, it’s that you gotta take the long view and not get distracted by every heckler in the cheap seats.
Yet, thanks to these platforms, we are treated to quite a few of these little stories that would otherwise go unnoticed beyond the reach of local papers. Sometimes they’re compelling human-interest articles; but in terms of real politics, I think an apparent deluge of crazy stuff can make one’s personal views feel under siege even if they are not. For instance, same-sex marriage rights are actually moving at a pretty remarkable pace toward universal ratification compared to other hard-won civil rights in American history. And so in this example, I often wonder in what way the cause is benefitted when friends amplify the litany of lunatics on the issue. Because I don’t think even Justice Scalia is likely to weigh his decision thinking, “Well, I was on the fence about the ol’ gay marriage, but when I heard Pastor McDumbass say that thing about the locusts and frogs, that was the clincher for me.”
On a more grim note, I think about these troubling events in Ferguson, New York, and Baltimore; and I’m admittedly pretty cynical about the idea that social media offer much help with whatever it is may be happening to race relations in this country. This is partly because I believe there are dynamics at play that transcend race; thus any shorthand commentary that reduces everything to black and white (literally and figuratively) probably isn’t anywhere near discussing the true nature of the problem. As these tragic events unfold, Facebook and Twitter offer various bandwagons for us to climb aboard, but heading where exactly? And yes, plenty of thoughtful articles are written and shared, and that’s a good thing. But in the opposite extreme, the wrong-headed, violent responses are also inseminated and spread through social media in ways that are unique to our times.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the vague middle ground of all this, contemporary white college kids, gazing at screens in the safety of their dorms, post memes about Kent State because they don’t know what they’re talking about and because it’s easier to click on some fleeting image from an event that happened 50 years ago than it is to delve into what might really be going on today. And hell yes black lives matter, but I can’t help but find the hashtag itself just too damn trivial relative to the gravity of the situation. Or am I alone in thinking that so much of this new form of engagement feels so fundamentally unengaged?
It’s an odd dynamic to me. I can sit here in the relative security of my role as a white, middle-class, straight, male and spend half a day clicking things on Facebook that say let my gay friends marry and let my black friends live their lives without harassment by the police (these are just current examples), and I can feel good about my clicking and sharing despite the fact that it’s almost entirely useless. Because what will matter is who’s the mayor in a city or the police chief or who the Supreme Court Justices are. Policy will matter, which means what will matter above all is the economy. Meanwhile, statistics and anecdotal evidence suggests that the college kid who naively shared the Kent State meme might not even bother to vote because he thinks representative government is poisonous and the Internet is the antidote.
Ann Friedman concludes her article with advice as to how one might behave with friends online when politically-fueled disagreement flares up. “It’s hard to imagine saying to a friend, ‘If you disagree with me, you can just hang up the phone right now.’ That’s not how real-life friends do things,” she writes. I agree with her of course. As with the example of a vote yay or nay for a candidate, does it really matter if a friend has some quirky reason for liking or not liking said candidate? In many ways, social media environments like Facebook really are a new kind of petri dish for conducting that great experiment called America — always trying to see just how much we can fight and still remain friends.
