Facebook, egos and control

I’ve always had about a thousand friends of Facebook. I’m at 1,035 at the moment, but lately I’ve been cutting ties with lots of people. It started with ego centric posts that grew intolerable. These are people who live for minor celebrity status in our small little atheist community. I moved on to people who start dictating what I can post or how I can comment. These people are usually aligned with the victimhood movement. Somebody who suffers from depression and cannot tolerate a post that may trigger her unease about said aliment. Or somebody who posts a list of memes that are off limits. Or somebody who comes out as transgender and starts a round of pronoun wars. We are warned, “If you dare to post something I find offensive, I will ban you from commenting or unfollow you.” Or worse, “I will unfriend you."

I’m not sorry about this but… fuck you all to hell. Let me be the first to unfriend you. I friended you in the first place because I liked your ideas, you art or your activism. I some cases I friend you because you are just interesting. I don’t have enough energy to keep track of what content or subject offends which friend. I really don’t. Who does?

Case in point; I posted a list of books I’ve read so far in 2016. One book, The Deep Blue Good, A Travis McGee Novel, by John D. MacDonald, apparently raised the hackles of a feminist who messaged me to express her dismay that I would read such a horrible book. She suggested that I edit it out of my post so as not to offend others. The protagonist, Travis McGee, is an epic mansplainer sure, but the story was written in the early 60s and I’m a big boy. How would reading it offend some feminist friend? I don’t know, nor do I care. I have a solution though. Unfriend…