Why I Left Facebook - Almost

I can't remember when I decided to create a Facebook account, but I recall thinking the site would offer a great opportunity to connect with family and friends, and possibly be used as a tool for finding friends I had lost touch with. It would be nice to see photos of the offspring of relatives who lived too far to visit; fun to share a joke or funny picture with a sister across 3,000 miles of geography; and easy it to wish individuals and couples happy birthday or happy anniversary and accompany it with a card or graphic. This was the platform I could engage in regularly.

I might not remember when I decided to create a Facebook account, but I remember when I almost deleted that account, almost erased my presence from this single corner of the web universe, and almost relegated myself to shrinking back into dependence on telephone, mail, and personal visits.

It began with religion.

I am a student of Buddhism. I believe in care and kindness toward my fellow human beings. Despite the lofty goals of Buddhism, I would never suggest that anyone become a Buddhist. In return, I do not want anyone to tell me their religion is best or someone else’s religion is wrong. But then, references to my need to abide by some organized religion or religious group's beliefs began to show up in posts by friends and relatives.

It continued with politics.

My political views begin with research. As a voter and advocate, I study candidates and issues on all sides, trying to get a perspective that matches my personal beliefs, with a keen eye on the impact of any issue on people, the environment, and the future. Once I've analyzed as much as I can, based on news from various sources, I'm set. (Notice I said "news," not opinion.)

My views have always been based on research and study and not along party lines or recommendations from folks who have yet to delve deeply into issues on their own. And definitely not from people who circulate memes that have not been fact checked.

Eventually it became angry.

I never expected my presence on Facebook would become controversial; however, I also never expected to be confronted with so much misinformation, anger and vile hate. But there it was, smacking me in the face almost daily as I scanned the posts of my small group of friends and family.

I read the politically focused memes, posts, links and shared messages with my skepticism. Because some of these messages seemed so outrageous, I looked a bit further, checking Snopes and Urban Legends, clicking on links to uncover origins, looking for truth and honesty. When I found something false or at best, dubious, I did not fail to comment. In effect, I was policing my friends and family, which left a bad taste in my mouth -- and likely exasperated some.

But I did not like having others trying to influence me with their opinions -- opinions, not fact.

It took a while, but I eventually realized nothing I could do would stop the spread of tainted posts, so I began ignoring them or, in extreme cases, blocking them.

Still, I lingered, spending most of my time lurking while commenting on positive posts, and all was borderline fine until one post sent me over the edge. Someone I genuinely care about used the word "exterminate" in relation to the women of congress who appeared at the State of the Union address for the President of the United States.

These were the women elected by the voters, not by Facebook memes. Whether I favored or backed them did not matter. The majorities had spoken; the women were elected; and they expressed their solidarity by wearing white on this particular day.

Yes, I understood that if you were on the opposite side of the results of an election, this could upset you; but angering you to the point of espousing "extermination" was going way too far. To me, it ranked at the top, just above Photoshopped images of Barack Obama hanging from a tree or a similar manipulation showing Donald Trump blowing his brains out.

The statement reminded me of the women's suffragettes who endured torture, starvation and force feeding in a quest for the right to vote.

I was crushed, totally. This is not what I expected from my membership in Facebook. And because I realized I could not stop the publication of material that offended me, I removed the app’s Messenger from my phone and stopped signing in to my account, fully intending to delete it totally.

I did not.

Instead, I waited until I could look at the situation with a cooler head because besides giving me access to family and friends, Facebook also opened the doors to other websites, apps, games, my favorite entertainers, news, occasional bargains, new gadgets and -- I did miss "seeing" my friends. (I hope they missed me a little, too.)

I had also signed on to monitor pages from others, which meant I really should be able to log into Facebook.

 ... give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.

 Finally, when I clicked a link to view a breaking news story, I was shuffled over to the news station's Facebook page and I realized the giant social media company was too big to be ignored.

I decided to give it another try. However, this time around, my participation will not invite or accept certain types of posts or requests and I will not do policing ....

From this point forward ...

I will unfriend and/or block anyone who ...

1. Tries to convince me I need the words "under God" in a pledge to the American flag (It wasn’t there when I was in elementary school), or that I must say Merry Christmas as opposed to Happy Holidays.

2. Posts dangerous messages of hate, racism, or homophobia.

3. Reposts memes and/or links I know to be based on disinformation.

4. Insists their religion is the only true religion.

5. Challenges me to repost an inappropriate meme (see #1).

6. Posts too many "chain" posts.

7. Believes Bill Gates will donate a kidney (or at least a dollar) for every repost, which I know gives some company a tidy list of people on my friend list for marketing (or spam) purposes.

There are more, but a list of seven covers the most important bases for now. If the list offends you, so be it

I guess what I'm trying to say can be summed up via Facebook's full mission statement: "... give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together."

How the media shapes your thinking -- part two

If you think this article is just about your choice of liberal or conservative media, you need to continue reading. There are no politics involved ... at least not directly.

Last year, while confined to my sister's sofa due to illness, I did something I haven't done in years. I watched daytime television. She has some kind of basic satellite connection that offers a "rerun" station. That is, it takes current-running shows and repeats their older airings. Since I was not feeling well, I decided to watch reruns of a show called The Doctors. From what I've read, this is a very popular TV show but if you don't know anything about it, here's a summary: A team of medical doctors discuss various medical issues, problems, and solutions.

In this particular episode, the panel did a take on a recent study which (they said) indicated that diet soda is actually good for you. They went on to explain the study was commissioned by Coca Cola. 

Now you can probably tell where this is going. A study on diet drinks by a diet drink giant is not going to say anything bad about its products, right? And you can probably expect that these doctors would not only bring that up, but also would have substantial evidence to discredit this "study."

Guess again. Yes, they pooh-poohed the study, and did not offer rebuttal evidence ... but they did something even more interesting. One of the doctors recommended you take two plants, give one of them water for a week and one of them diet cola for a week and see what happens.

For now, we have to surmise that the cola-laden plant will do poorly but it would probably do just as poorly if you decided to use MILK instead of diet cola. Milk? Wait a minute. Is that not the drink that makes a body good? What will it do for the plant? I'm not going to try either experiment but I am going to wonder why the doctors did not explain that this study, like the study that "proves" milk was good for you back in the 30s or 40s was funded by -- drum roll, please -- the dairy industry.

I am not saying the panel was wrong or right. I'm saying they do the public an injustice by not explaining exactly how the conclusions were arrived at ... exactly who was studied, for how long, and what are the comparitive results. They might also point out how other industries finance studies that we not only accept as true and correct, but also live by. (By the way, milk does not make my body good ...) Or, at the very least they could have quoted the study completely because I cannot find anywhere that the study concluded that diet soda is better for you than water.

Here is the summary of the abstract (from https://www.sweeteners.org/category/21/article/71/does-low-energy-sweetener-consumption-affect-energy-intake-and-body-weight-a-systematic-review-including-meta-analyses-of-the-evidence-from-human-and-animal-studies):

“We found a considerable weight of evidence in favour of consumption of low energy sweeteners (LES) in place of sugar as helpful in reducing relative energy intake and body weight, with no evidence from the many acute and sustained intervention studies in humans that low energy sweeteners increase energy intake. Importantly, the effects of LES-sweetened beverages on body weight also appear neutral relative to water, or even beneficial in some contexts.”

It's nice that these professionals took a document and interpreted it for their viewers ... but how accurate was their interpretation ... or more importantly, do we need someone else to explain a document?

Here's my take for the doctors: Go ahead and report on this stuff if you think it is important for your audience to know ... but report on it completely with the traditional who, what, where, when, and why.... then interject your opinion and state it as opinion.

You decide.