This is more than a bit of an offbeat piece, but it’s come about as a result of private notes I’ve gotten from others on my Facebook page and extensive ruminations I’ve given to the subject.
A starting point is to offer some perspective. And politics is a good beginning: I don’t think Joe Biden is without flaws, nor is the Democratic Party. And they haven’t done everything as well as I’d wish. I’ve written about my disagreements over time. That said, I disagree with my friends regularly, and with my family members, too, and even with myself on occasion and change my mind or go back and forth when I’m unsure about something. I have strong opinions, but am not 100% sure I’m 100% right 100% of the time. Really good arguments convince me to the contrary. So, disagreeing with someone doesn’t discredit everything about them. Or even discredit most things. But overall, I clearly do generally agree with Democrats and liberals and President Biden. Far more to the point, whatever my disagreements with them, they pale compared to the white supremacist, quite-literal fascism of Trump and today’s Republican Party. A party where unanimity of thought is the guiding standard, where if you disagree on almost anything you’re called a Republican in Name Only, where Ronald Reagan set the GOP 11th Commandment: “Thou shalt not disagree with another Republican.” Which is why we see so many near-unanimous votes by Republicans in Congress and state houses, marching in close-minded lockstep. As a result, any comparison of the two parties today that tries to offset a Republican attack against the democratic process, minorities, women, human decency, or the reality of facts on the one side with a supposedly-balanced “On the other hand…” is almost always a false equivalence. After you've discussed Trump calling Mexican rapists, and Third World countries sh*tholes, and talking about grabbing women by the p*ssy and saying that there are many fine people about the neo-Nazis, and telling the white supremacist Proud Boys to "Stand back and stand by," there is no "On the other hand..." among Joe Biden or any Democratic leader that offsets that at an equal issue. And any “But what about…” effort to change the subject or make a false point is a deceitful, empty universe compared to the monumental list of GOP transgressions. No, “But what about Hunter Biden?” isn’t the equivalent of Trump saying the pandemic that’s killed 6.2 million worldwide would go away like a miracle and suggesting to drink deadly bleach. “But her emails!” doesn’t offset taking children from their parents and putting them in cages. And from having to answer about Trump saying he believes the despotic butcher Vladimir Putin, not U.S. intelligence. And Trump saying Putin is a genius. And that he’s in love with Kim Jong Un. And that Trump withheld defense funds from Ukraine and tried to blackmail its President Zelensky. Reality counts, too – the Republican Talking Point that the election was stolen doesn’t let you ignore the facts that there is zero evidence to the lie and that 60 lawsuits were filed and every one was lost. The Republican Talking Point criticizing two days of a terrible withdrawal from Afghanistan doesn’t let one get away with ignoring that it was Trump who actually signed the agreement actually handing the country to the Taliban, and that it was Trump who actually forced an early date on the withdrawal, and Trump who actually signed an Executive Order that made it near-impossible to get Afghans out who had helped U.S. forces. Nor does one get to ignore that after those two awful days, the American withdrawal went impressively, stopped a terrorist attack, and every American there was gotten out. Facts matter. Reality matters. History matters -- as much as Trump wants to tell us that there were airports during the Revolutionary War. That is why I wrote my “Don’t Let It Be Forgot” article here. Any attempt now to change a discussion with me by using a “But what about…” will get a link to that article, along with an admonition that if you first answer these several hundred ghastly offenses of Trump and today’s GOP built up from over the past five years, and then finally address whatever the topic is being discussed before you tried to hijack it, then I’ll consider diverting to your “But what aboutism…??!” Which brings us to social media. Which is the main topic at hand. Though I think social media is a good thing, an interesting endeavor, it is not without huge flaws. I block a lot of people on Twitter since life is too short not to – the way Twitter works, when comments get shared they’re passed around with particular ease, becoming part of discussions which get to be part of other discussions. So, you often find yourself answering the same “complaint” relentlessly from random strangers who never see your repeated answer to other strangers. And because a Tweet can be pulled away from its original context like by a giant wave’s undertow and end up in one of Twitter’s dark corners, many of the replies you get can become quite racist, abusive, conspiratorial lunatic, ad hominen and more. And because Twitter has few controls on who can read what you post, your options are generally to be dragged into hell or block the person. And so, block wins out because life is too short. Facebook is different. Discussions tend to kept more-reasonably to the topic at hand. And there are options for who can read one’s feed. So, the vitriol and intentional offensiveness is generally less. Indeed, having different opinions is not only fine, but what can make discussions vibrant. As a result, I think I’ve only blocked two people on Facebook. And that was for continued racist comments and abusiveness that got out of control. Still, there are lines where participation crosses from mere annoying to abusive, pushing people away. It’s a blurry, flexible line, but it’s there. It’s like at a pleasant party filled with lively conversation on many sides, but one person has had a few too many beers and begins talking a bit too loud, keeps telling others that “Oh, I’m just joking, can’t you take a joke?”, and soon starts getting in people’s faces saying “I’m just being honest” though he’s really only trying to have his voice dominate the conversation, and as they look for other conversations to join he snipes, “I’m just giving my opinion, you elitists think your opinion is better than mine, don’t you?” – even though he’s a sales executive, the topic is cardiology and he’s talking to a heart surgeon…and guests start to leave. And the party empties to the point where the last people getting their coats have to listen to his stream-of-consciousness cries on what the hell is wrong with the rest of the world. So, the challenge is always how to deal politely with such people so – a difficult task when they only want to hear themselves. Or troll others just to annoy them. And it’s all the more a task when they mistakenly see Facebook as just one, big public forum, a “Bughouse Square” where anyone can get on their soapbox and yell at whoever is passing that they’re sinful and unless they repent the world will end -- when in fact it’s not that at all, but rather they’ve arrived at a personal page, in essence a private home, where the foundational point is for that person who created it to have their very own place to express their views. And if anyone feels they want to join in, it’s for the proprietor to facilitate discussion – setting conditions and giving consent. And just as there are no “Rules of Entry” taped to the wall when you enter someone’s house, it’s still accepted that when the householder says, “You’re shouting much too loud and making a nuisance,” it’s their right. The great thing about Facebook is that if anyone doesn’t like it there, if you want your own soapbox, you already have your own personal page to rail at the world by your own rules. This all came to mind when a couple months back, someone I knew when I was a kid over 50 years ago found his way here. And while his participation, like everyone’s, was welcome, it got to the point where it was clear he just wanted to troll, change subjects and hear his voice. And I quite literally had no interest in that. And I said so, publicly and directly -- that I wouldn’t be reading anything more he wrote here. And I haven’t since. Nothing. Apparently thinking I didn’t mean what I said, he regularly sends me dozens of private Direct Messages, and I’ve never read even one but just click the “Mark as Read” button. For all I know, he’s telling me how he’s become convinced by the brilliance of my articles, and he now agrees with me on everything! But I don’t read them and don’t respond. Yet what’s weird is that despite me never once replying, he keeps sending them, many dozens, for reasons unknown to man. Which I think says a lot about his need to get in an open field and bray at the moon, just so everyone can hear his voice. He also keeps responding publicly to discussions here, which is fine. A wide range of views is welcome and encouraged. I get a notice when all new posts arrives, although (as I said and meant) I don’t read any of his. Life is too short to get dragged into a faux-debate where the other side is always braying at you, dumping untruths (the polite word) he picked up on alt-media, changing the subject when reality is too inconvenient, and continually throwing in “Well, what abouts…” as if that’s an answer – and which ignores several hundred far-worse “what abouts” that could be thrown back in return. What’s less fine, though, is hearing from people about how abusive and “insane” some of what he posts is. I trust judgement of these people, since I know their judgement. No one has yet said they’re leaving this page, though some have said they just won’t participate because they don’t want to get dragged down into his hell. And that’s where the line begins to get blurry, as I noted above. And I don’t know where that line exactly is. I do know that sending unrelenting private messages to someone that go unanswered is abusive and crossing the line. And if it continues, it qualifies for blocking. But where is the abusive line crossed when making public comments in a discussion? It would cross that line when it pushes many others into leaving. But it dances on the line when it keeps some people from participating. I have no problem blocking people on Twitter. It’s the nature of the beast. But I don’t like blocking people here on Facebook. I have, though, when one crosses the line too far. And I will again. Because life is too short. And for the people who participate here, I welcome them with great pleasure, and want to help make the experience a good one for them, for as many as possible. I think the line becomes even more flexible when you know someone. But when “knowing someone” is itself a flexible term, then it becomes trickier still. There are people we know since kindergarten, which (thanks to the word “since) on the surface has the patina of deep closeness, though in reality we haven’t spoken to since they moved away in the fourth grade a great many decades and a lifetime ago. There are people we know from having met them only a very few years before but are in touch with regularly, having become good, close friends. There even are people we “know” but have never met or even spoken to, who we have nonetheless had countless exchanges online. So, it’s all flexible. The mystical line of what is enough, what defines who we know, where do disagreements sit, sliding from the public into intruding on privacy, and so much more. But weaving its way through all of that, though I rarely use it, I nonetheless keep my eye on the “Block” button all the time, poised to press it at any given moment. Because life is too short.
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This is a bit of personal folderol, but so offbeat, unexpected and weird, and ultimately funny, that it’s worth retelling. It begins by helping to know who Clint Watts is. I suspect that most people who watch MSNBC do know, since he’s on often as a former FBI agent who’s testified before Congress and serves as the network’s analyst. He’s straight-forward, objective and no nonsense. Here’s some video footage in case you need a reminder or introduction. On Tuesday, Mr. Watts was again on MSNBC, talking from home about something critical – I believe it was the January 6th insurrection – and he did it in his as-always serious manner. Except there was one minor thing very different which leaped out, and was so surprisingly funny that I thought it deserved to be mentioned, and so I sent out a tweet about it. I wrote – “I just love that the always serious, profoundly objective, deeply staid former FBI agent Clint Watts is now on MSNBC with a ‘GO ARMY, BEAT NAVY’ whiteboard behind him.” It was hard to miss. As he spoke in his low-key, but blunt and forceful way about the critical topic, he’d put up a large whiteboard behind him and handwrote his message about this weekend’s big Army-Navy football game in very big letters. To make it even more surprising, a few minutes after I posted my note, I saw that it had gotten “Liked” by – Clint Watts. And then it was immediately followed by another public tweet from him to me that simply read, “#Go Army #BEAT navy.” Not what I expected from Clint Watts. Nor did I expect the adventure that was to follow from my benign, complimentary tweet. What happened was that shortly after, there was a responding tweet to me and Clint Watts from somebody chiding me, saying that the last thing they would ever describe Clint Watts as was “dull.” Okay, yes, it missed the point of my good-natured observation, but – c’mon, I didn’t call Clint Watts dull. I said he was always serious and profoundly objective. In these days of recommending to drink bleach and believing JFK is coming back from the dead, that's almost as high praise as I can give someone. Yes, I also said he was “deeply staid,” but the very definition of... Well, as I was pondering this, another similar note came in reply to me and Clint Watts, taking me to task for my description of him. And then, even Clint Watts jumped in, saying to my burgeoning dismay something like how that was his thought, too. Which struck me as a bit odd since he’d “Liked” my initial tweet. No one seemed actually upset, it was still at the kidding-around level, but kidding about something I not only hadn't said, but wouldn't dream of saying and opposite of the point I had made. I felt I had to do something, not wanting a single misunderstood word to insult someone whose career protecting the United States was truly estimable I was praising, so I responded individually to everyone who’d replied by writing “To clarify, ‘dull’ is only the *second* definition in my dictionary of ‘staid’ But the FIRST definition is – ‘Characterized by dignity and propriety.’ That's what I was going for -- the FIRST definition.” I thought that would resolve things at last. But the way Twitter works, people can see the first tweet alone, and not necessarily your replies and clarification that scroll by later. And a few more did come in. And the other previous respondents kept commenting on it to themselves. At last, I felt that I had to make another effort to stop the bleeding. (Okay, it wasn’t that bad, but my initial benign little note was getting out of hand, especially towards someone I admired. So, I wrote directly to Clint Watts -- And I also decided to take preventative action so that this all didn’t spread further out of control. So, I deleted my initial tweet and instead wrote a new note that said “Since one adjective in an earlier tweet has been misinterpreted by some, I replaced it” – and then reposted what I'd originally written...but instead of the word “staid,” I used “dignified.” And that seemed to do the trick to end the barrage, though not for the "Ohhh, okay, I get it" reason I thought. Rather, and most importantly, these other folks seemed to realize my moderate distress and so, it also brought about explanations about what had been going on. It turned out that all these people I thought had been chastising me were, in fact, longtime friends of Clint Watts, and they were really ridiculing him. As one of the correspondents wrote -- Well, that was certainly a relief. I had not insulted someone, even mildly, who was pretty heroic. I wrote back, "Thanks much, I appreciate it. And I completely understand private jokes with good friends. (And I'm glad to have been able to start it off, even if unknowingly...) I'm sure you can understand why, as an unawares recipient, I wanted to clarify I was trying to be complimentary." Which got a "Like" in return from him. And pretty much the same in exchanges with others. But the best came from the Mothership himself, since he had been following along with all the others. It was indeed a "Phew!" moment. All the more so when he also noted, "No worries. I love being staid!” In fairness, I knew I hadn't written anything incorrect or remotely insulting -- but I also knew that it had been misinterpreted by others just a bit, including by the subject of it all himself who (even though he had "Liked" the comment) deserved a great deal of respect. Most especially because I'm sure he has been vilified relentlessly over the past few years for his harsh, public criticism of the lawlessness by the Trump administration -- not to mention what he's dealt without throughout his career. And so, I wrote back that, "As you can imagine, I'm pleased no faux pas was committed, & that I was able to be the catalyst of the exchange between good friends...even if I had no idea what on earth I was doing. I suspect these days, any public figure being called a "wonderful" adjective is a rare relief." Which, happily, he "Liked." Which I liked. And yes, as I said, the whole thing was so offbeat, unexpected and weird. And ultimately funny. And Shakespearean -- since all's well that ends well. Yesterday while watching Andrea Mitchell Reports on MSNBC, they did a brief piece on the meltdown by Ted Cruz and other Republicans over Big Bird from Sesame Street sending out a tweet about kids getting vaccinated. But Mitchell's story left out one important point, which I tweeted. I wrote --
"Note to @mitchellreports -- if you do another story about Republicans "outraged" at the beloved fictional Muppet Big Bird for advocating the COVID vaccine, I hope you mention that Big Bird has been supporting that kids gets vaccinated since 1972!!! Almost half a century!" This brought about an angry response -- not about me, but about Andrea Mitchell who tends to get criticism from both the right and the left when she does something they don't like. The person wrote -- "She sucks, and how her and Chuck Todd still have jobs, is beyond shocking" Well, I thought that was a tad harsh, especially given her long and distinguished career. And normally I'd have let it slide, but since it was addressed to me, I didn't want my silence to suggest agreement. So, I wrote back -- "I don't agree. She doesn't always do stories the way I wish, & it bugs me but I don't expect her to report to my standards. However, in the Big Bird story she did jab Cruz & others for attacking a fictional character. And showed Big Bird's tweet saying he'd been vaxxed for years." And that brought about a note from my correspondent, who replied -- "That's a fair assessment." I could only just roll my eyes. I mean, yes, I did add a little bit of information, but it was pretty minor. Especially since it was written to someone who wasn't just complaining about this one small report, but stating bluntly overall that Andrea Mitchell "sucks" and how it's "beyond shocking" that she even has a job. Mind you, I'm not complaining. I was explaining the person to begin slamming me as a right-wing apologist and something. So, I was actually quite pleased by the reply. But the eye-rolling for such a 180-degree switch from the outrage (!!) was too much. Yes, hyperbolic angst is alive and well on social media, even when people don't exactly mean it.
A CNN reporter posted the following question on Twitter yesterday --
I offered the following suggestions -- The Facebook Facebook 2.0 Face Book Facebook+ Faceb00k Facebook ETC. Facebook! Facebookpedia The New Facebook Zuckerbook The Cracker Barrel Winklevoss Ye Olde Facebooke Facebūk Le Facebook F-a-c-e-b-o-o-k The Social Network It turns out that, alas, I was wrong in all my guesses. Facebook has just announced that they changed the parent company name to... Wait, so Facebook isn't even changing the name of Facebook at all??! They're just changing the name of the company! Facebook will still be...Facebook. Yes, that's quite the major change to signal the big changes that all its bad news has seemingly demanded. Cool. By the way, the new name of the parent company will be Meta. On the one hand, this is a perfectly good name for a huge tech company. On the other hand -- "metadata" is the phenomenally valuable asset of user information that Facebook mines and sells to other companies. (Maybe 15 years ago, I was interviewing someone at the Consumer Electronics Show and wrote about him describing that most people were missing the big picture about the company, that it was all the "metadata" of private information that was the most valuable thing to Facebook by far. So -- well, one would think that merely changing the name of your parent company to one of the main issues that's pushed some people in Congress to say Facebook should be broken up because it controls too much information for one private company might not be the wisest tactic to take...
Yesterday on Twitter and Facebook, I posted the following. I thought nothing of it, I've linked to such stories regularly. And usually on Twitter I get somewhere between 5 and 50 "Likes" or retweets. (Facebook is much different, since responses there are limited to people who follow me. On Twitter, things can get retweeted endlessly and bounced around all over the place.)
While pointed, I thought it was pretty benign.
For reasons totally unexpected by me, this one made some people very angry on Twitter. I responded to a few, though not many. In part because I didn't care enough and had no interest in debating anyone so venal or snarky, but in part too because there were too many responses, and I just had zero interest reading through them all.
But -- On the other side of the coin, however many angry replies I got, they were paltry, overwhelmed by the tsunami of people who were pleased by the story. As I write this in the morning, about 12 hours after having posted that above-tweet, I have also now gotten more "Likes"...than there were expected attendees! So far, and the number keeps rising, there have been over 12,000 (!!) "Likes," and it has clogged up my Twitter feed. [UPDATE: Four hours later, it's now over 17,000, which is officially the most responses I've gotten to a tweet.] For what it's worth, I also (not surprisingly) have not responded to many of the notes where people have written positive comments. Just too many to read, of course. At first, I did reply to people who said that there's no way that's even 1,000 people. I explained that I was just quoting the newspaper article, and noted that there might be people in the balcony (if there was one), or behind the camera, or in the lobby -- and also that it's a two-day event, so maybe the 1,000 includes both days. But after a handful of writing those answers, I gave up with that, too. (Okay, a side note: I did see one snarky tweet scroll by this morning from a Trumper, and just had to respond to it. It was too perfect a set-up not to. What he wrote was, "Joe cant count to a thousand..let's go brandon." I wrote back -- "It's spelled 'can't.' And Brandon is capitalized. And there should be a comma after 'go.' You're welcome. Goodbye!" Seriously, there was no way I could let that slide...) By the way, for those keeping a record of such things, the previous biggest response I'd had to a tweet -- one that was near-unanimously positive -- was when I wrote about a young boy who had just spoken eloquently at last year's "virtual" Democratic Convention and reminded people he was the same kid who Joe Biden had met at a campaign event and offered to stay in touch with him to help with his stuttering. That tweet got over 16,000 "Likes" (and still gets some from time to time). As a related note, anyone replying to me on Twitter during the next day or so shouldn't expect a response since it will be buried in the avalanche... SECOND UPDATE: As of 11 PM tonight, the number of "Likes" now as gone up to 24,000. If you didn’t see Last Week Tonight with John Oliver last night, his Main Story was about misinformation on the Internet – but from a different perspective than what otherwise might be usual. This was about misinformation directed online at the communities of people from foreign-speaking countries, which is far less policed than material in English. It’s very interesting and often quite funny, though his suggested solutions are pretty thin. On a separate note, I loved that in the show’s opening news-section, they did a long piece of the part that AT&T plays in OANN – a story I wrote about here last week which has gotten much less attention than it deserves. |
AuthorRobert J. Elisberg is a political commentator, screenwriter, novelist, tech writer and also some other things that I just tend to keep forgetting. Feedspot Badge of Honor
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