[adventured]

In my experience, some of the nicest people I know also happen to have extremely overwhelming political opinions & behaviors. They're extreme partisans basically. Facebook has shown me a side of them that is very ugly. Plus, we're now culturally living in a time of belligerent identity politics combined with a sort of 'if you are not aggressively with us, you are against us and evil'. It's an incredibly toxic environment.

For example (more recently), several of my most liberal friends (all extremely nice people in person) have become venom spewing monsters, they rage non-stop, pretty much every day, about Trump this and Trump that and so on and so forth. They spew vindictive statements, they cheer about terrible things, they wish for horrible things to happen for political reasons, they casually toss insults, they threaten their other friends if they support Trump or if they don't support the anti-Trump side enough.

That kind of stuff makes me really dislike Facebook. Everybody I know on the network has had a similar experience over the last few years (and it really got bad with the election). And that's before you get to the other political stuff like intentional misinformation, lying, propaganda, fake news, etc. etc. And... that's before you get to the personal drama that occasionally spills over to FB. It's like six layers of hell frosted with brain-numbing spam from 22words and Bored Panda. So you start hiding posts by certain people, trying to restrain the flow of sewage. Block this page, block that game, ignore that notice, roll over a wall of 27 auto-playing spam videos, hide this post by that friend, stop seeing posts by that person. Facebook has gotten so large that it has become humanity, in my opinion, in all the good and bad ways that implies.

[Semaphor]

Interesting, that sounds to me that you are seeing sides of your friends you didn't want to know about? I don't have that problem, but if I would, I'd either unfollow their posts or outright delete them (depending on if I need/want to keep in contact with them on messenger).

[adventured]

Well for example with the rage party regarding Trump. I knew all the political opinions of my friends that have lost their minds over that (so to speak). I'm socially liberal, so their political ideas mostly never bothered me (even when I disagree with them). Their behavior on the other hand, is grotesque. They've become what they proclaimed to dislike.

Almost all people behave differently under different social circumstances and pressures. Facebook seems to bring out - unleash - the worst in some very nice people. My observation is, as one would expect, they justify the bad behavior by proclaiming that the venom spewing is justified by the nature of the opponents they're attempting to counter. Means justified by the end goal.

It's said that online anonymity + forum = asshole behavior. I've come to wonder if enough time being acclimated to a public social network like Facebook, doesn't degrade the social niceties and manners that used to exist among friends in the early days of MySpace and Facebook.

[Semaphor]

I mean finding out too much not by their opinions, but how they, at least sometimes, behave.

> Means justified by the end goal.

Had a person like that once, they posted a picture with text (my personal wisdom for those is to assume it's all wrong), I called them out on some bullshit on it, they said "And? The company is still evil.". Unfollow instantly solved that for me.