Fun with Facebook groups.
Mar. 24th, 2011 04:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sechan19I've recently discovered the joy of creating custom Facebook groups that can henceforth be blocked from viewing selected content on your profile page. This makes me especially happy because I've recently decided that I dislike having certain members of my family view certain things that I post. For one thing, I know it disturbs them, and for another, they consequently make snarky remarks that disturb me.
Social networking is an interesting beast. It's designed to bring people closer together, and it does that. But it can subsequently force loved ones to face uncomfortable truths about one another.
For me, it's not such a big deal. I've always known this part of my family's religio-political leanings. Grounded as they are on faith, I've always had to swallow them with a smile and keep my own opinions (not grounded on faith) to myself.
But I don't do that on Facebook, and it's generated some seriously mixed results. People who never knew before now know that I'm an agnostic, that I specifically don't believe in their god, and that I support a socio-political agenda that they consider to stem from moral bankrupcy, now know all that. And that's all okay; in fact, a part of me is glad that Facebook has made matters so plain.
But another part of me doesn't want to do the dance anymore. So into the special group they go, to hear no more of my opinions about a woman's right to choose, a man's right to love another man, an artist's right to display something offensive to the church, and the government's right to mind its own damn business, and so on. It'll worry them less.
Because my decision is motivated out of love for them.
That's the intriguing thing about family, you know. The bonds of family can be stronger than ideological divides (although they aren't always). The family unit is small enough to negotiate those confrontations successfully where the village, town, city, state, country, and world may be too big to adequately address them to everyone's satisfaction.
Which is good for me. I wouldn't want there to be strain between me and my loved ones, and I'm lucky that I don't have to make a choice between them and upholding the things that I believe are right. But enough [of the cyber weirdness] is enough.
And just for the record, if you're reading this blog you're unlikely to be in the special group for people-who-just-can't-accept-my-viewpoint-without making-well-meaning-though-ultimately-snarky-comments. So don't worry about that.
Social networking is an interesting beast. It's designed to bring people closer together, and it does that. But it can subsequently force loved ones to face uncomfortable truths about one another.
For me, it's not such a big deal. I've always known this part of my family's religio-political leanings. Grounded as they are on faith, I've always had to swallow them with a smile and keep my own opinions (not grounded on faith) to myself.
But I don't do that on Facebook, and it's generated some seriously mixed results. People who never knew before now know that I'm an agnostic, that I specifically don't believe in their god, and that I support a socio-political agenda that they consider to stem from moral bankrupcy, now know all that. And that's all okay; in fact, a part of me is glad that Facebook has made matters so plain.
But another part of me doesn't want to do the dance anymore. So into the special group they go, to hear no more of my opinions about a woman's right to choose, a man's right to love another man, an artist's right to display something offensive to the church, and the government's right to mind its own damn business, and so on. It'll worry them less.
Because my decision is motivated out of love for them.
That's the intriguing thing about family, you know. The bonds of family can be stronger than ideological divides (although they aren't always). The family unit is small enough to negotiate those confrontations successfully where the village, town, city, state, country, and world may be too big to adequately address them to everyone's satisfaction.
Which is good for me. I wouldn't want there to be strain between me and my loved ones, and I'm lucky that I don't have to make a choice between them and upholding the things that I believe are right. But enough [of the cyber weirdness] is enough.
And just for the record, if you're reading this blog you're unlikely to be in the special group for people-who-just-can't-accept-my-viewpoint-without making-well-meaning-though-ultimately-snarky-comments. So don't worry about that.
