You Should Give Your Friend Shit for Liking Mitt Romney (or Obama) on Facebook

A couple days ago, I wrote a post about the recent phenomenon of liberal Facebookers finding out they’d unknowingly ‘Liked’ Mitt Romney. It got picked up by Slashdot, which brought over a small flood of readers from a broad background.

Many took issue with my closing paragraph, which was written mostly in jest:

what if those mysterious Mitt-likers were in fact liking his Facebook page to receive updates about his campaign, hear his latest views on current events, and get introduced to his ideas? What if one 'liked' both candidates and read their updates in order to make a better-informed decision come November? Nah, wouldn't happen. Because then all of your friends would see that you 'liked' the other guy, and would give you shit for making such a public preference. I would.

One comment, from a fine avatar named wambu, quickly got voted to the top: "You would “give them shit”? You are what’s wrong with American politics."

Me? A dude giving his friends a hard time on Facebook for supporting a different candidate? I don’t really think that particular practice represents the apex of all that is wrong with American politics. After all, people have been giving their friends shit about how their various preferences differ from one another since erect-standing ape-men started congregating in groups and practicing comprehensible speech.

But some people do. So it’s interesting to pick apart what wambu was getting at — which, to my best estimation, is the fact that our internet lives are filled with hordes of people pouncing on everyone who is ideologically dissimilar. Whether in YouTube comments, Reddit message boards, or the response forum to an article, people give people shit for disagreeing with their views. And it seems to produce an ugly, unproductive cesspool. It leads to the impression that everywhere we look, people are yelling at each other, vehemently disagreeing with each other, calling each other idiots, and worse.

So when I say that I’d give my friends shit for liking Mitt Romney on Facebook, it seems like I’m endorsing that ugly trend. There’s one major difference, and it’s the one that it seems like almost everybody forgets from time to time — those ‘friends’ on Facebook are actually my friends. We either have a personal relationship or have agreed that we like one another enough to follow each other’s stream-of-consciousness postings. And taken together, these ’friend’ships yield a comparatively small tribe of like-minded people who are comfortable reading one another’s exploits.

With that in mind, imagine that you’re standing around in the meatspace with six or seven of your friends. One of them goes, “man, that Mitt Romney (or Obama) is the bee’s knees!” (since we are hanging out in person, away from screens, it must the 50s or so). If you’re actually friends, is it not perfectly acceptable to josh your pal a bit for liking the rich guy who used to strap the family dog to the roof of the car? Obviously, it is.

That’s what buddies do; we give each other shit about our differences. It’s basic social behavior. So why shouldn’t the same standards apply on Facebook? Why should posts from your friends there be so different than the statements you make in a bar — unless, like the person I featured in the article who said she’d ‘unfriend’ anyone she caught supporting Romney, you’re predisposed to exclusionary behavior? It shouldn’t, really.

Except that people have different relationships to Facebook and social networks. Some people use them specifically for networking, and make it a point to earn as many ‘friends’ as they can. Others, like me, have relatively few ‘friends’, and use the tool as to communicate with them in a similar manner we would offline. And that’s long been one of the great grey areas of communicating across these platforms; we all have different standards and expectations of what’s appropriate on each, and we’re rarely on the same page. Still, we’re at least alluding to friendship here; so if my friend wants to post a pro-Romney update on his wall, it’s fair game to take a stab at it with a joke or such. I’m not going to call him an uninformed fucking idiot Repug; not every online interactions needs to resemble a YouTube comment section, after all. And the standards I’d apply in the meatspace apply here, too.

Also, giving people shit on Facebook may actually have positive, tangible benefits. This Pew Internet study found that a small percentage, 16% of users, reported having their minds changed on a political issue by Facebook posts and dialogue encountered there. The number rose to 24% for liberals.

So go ahead. Give your friends shit about the crappy politician they support on Facebook. They’re your friends after all, they can take it. Let’s not let the veneer of Facebook drain the organic components from the way we get on with our friends. There’s no need to be overly polite with the people who have consensually agreed to be your friend, even if on an online social networking platform. And you might even get them to change their mind about that shitty politician they’re always posting about.