I remember when I was in high school, and Facebook wasn’t even a thing yet. We had Myspace, and nobody posted anything political on it. We all worried about how many friends we had, and it was like a competition to see who had the most. My sophomore year, I think, is when Facebook was getting popular with the general public, because it was originally for Ivy League students.
Back then, we just posted our favorite songs, wrote quotes from favorite movies, and “poked” each other. We also posted memes or pet pictures, and it was just not a toxic place to keep in touch with your friends. But over the past 15 years or so its gotten so toxic, and we post about controversial things that you end up losing long-time friends or family.
Now people will publicly post about their beliefs. We get more posts about religion and which political side we are on. Famous athletes and celebrities will talk about how they don’t want their young children or niece or nephew to use the bathroom while someone who is trans and identifies as a woman. There are even videos people post, one that I recently saw was a father with two young women, and he took them into the women’s restroom, the worker at the gas station called the cops, and caused a scene.
Now you have all these people commenting on celebrities’ posts that are even pro trans or whatever, and people will verbally attack them. People call parents with trans kids, who accept their kids as trans, abusive parents. It makes no sense to me, and it clearly doesn’t affect them directly.
I wish that Facebook, Instagram, and all the others would go back to how they used to be. Posting a picture that you thought you looked cute in doesn’t start a big political debate. Or that someone saves a baby from drowning, but people are mad that the person is trans. When did we get so nosy that something as simple as a man saving a baby somehow is about them being trans? Why can’t they just be a hero who saved a child? People purposely look for something to complain about and make a big deal about.
If we stop focusing on things that don’t directly affect us, such as two men getting married in a city miles away from you, we would have less hate in the world and less violence against minorities and lgbt communities.
