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Those awkward Facebook issues
Jul. 24th, 2013 04:48 pmI had recently friended someone I used to work with after catching up with her at the baby shower for the daughter of a common former coworker.
Today I nearly unfriended her. She posted a link to... propaganda about welfare and public assistance in this country, with a sidebar of slamming public health care, that claimed that public assistance would give a person dramatically higher income than a minimum wage job. She remarked that, back when she was in such dire straits in her own personal economy, she would have qualified for a ridiculous amount of food stamps. She elected not to file for the benefit, but bootstrapped herself back to being employed, etc.
I did not have the strength of character to go through the document and research the corrections to make it match with reality. Nor did I have the heart to tell her that, having NOT tried to get food stamps, she doesn't realize that actually, being a single, childless woman, she would not have gotten anywhere near what she thinks she would have.
Instead, I realized that Facebook does give you the option to remove someone from your newsfeed. I am choosing that option instead of unfriending. Just until the blind rage subsides.
This is a good time to remind myself that I was peer-pressured into getting Facebook when I left my job, to keep in touch with people I worked with. Politics and religion are hot-button issues at the best of times, I can choose to refrain from making myself crazy this way. She's no different, really, than the obnoxiously hyper-Christian former coworkers I grit my teeth and ignore.
Today I nearly unfriended her. She posted a link to... propaganda about welfare and public assistance in this country, with a sidebar of slamming public health care, that claimed that public assistance would give a person dramatically higher income than a minimum wage job. She remarked that, back when she was in such dire straits in her own personal economy, she would have qualified for a ridiculous amount of food stamps. She elected not to file for the benefit, but bootstrapped herself back to being employed, etc.
I did not have the strength of character to go through the document and research the corrections to make it match with reality. Nor did I have the heart to tell her that, having NOT tried to get food stamps, she doesn't realize that actually, being a single, childless woman, she would not have gotten anywhere near what she thinks she would have.
Instead, I realized that Facebook does give you the option to remove someone from your newsfeed. I am choosing that option instead of unfriending. Just until the blind rage subsides.
This is a good time to remind myself that I was peer-pressured into getting Facebook when I left my job, to keep in touch with people I worked with. Politics and religion are hot-button issues at the best of times, I can choose to refrain from making myself crazy this way. She's no different, really, than the obnoxiously hyper-Christian former coworkers I grit my teeth and ignore.
