Blot out the Facebook brawl

Hide, hide all, unfollow, unfriend.

These are words to remember, in these troubled times.

I remember them, because I’m on Facebook, where you have to know the four-step method to cleaning the wall where all the political posts from your “friends” show up.

I had to clean stuff off my Facebook wall a lot, this election year, just to hose off all the horse manure.

Used to be that was hyperbole for online posts with which you disagree. Not this year, when any outrageous post seemed real, because the reality was surreal. So people would post stories almost any more critical news consumer could tell were entirely fictional, fabrications cleverly crafted to con the gullible.

That Facebook became a manure-spreader has been confirmed by research showing fake news this year went viral faster than a common cold.

My favorite example wasn’t politically motivated, but stereotypical: It was a news report that a guy lighting his flatulence afire burned down his trailer.

In Florida.

Setting it in Florida made it sound not just plausible, but spot on. “Only in Florida!” people chortled as they posted it to Facebook.

Politics

Even that was not as volatile as some of the political posts that provoked passionate discussion and debates that some partisans tried to participate in politely, but failed.

They got at each other’s throats faster than hot teenagers on a hickey binge. Now their calling each other “friends” is a stretch. Their interactions are more like a drunken brawl in a crowded bar, where they don’t hit each other so much as spill drinks, topple furniture and make a lot of noise.

When a bar fight breaks out, you don’t cut in. You grab your drink and get out of the way.

Folks forget this on social media, where they just can’t resist the temptation to throw a punch or two.

If you’ve ever joined in a political debate on Facebook, you may have found it to be civil and insightful.

Ha! Just kidding. You might as well have called up an ex-spouse and unburdened your memory of all the things you wish you had said.

On Facebook, you can go back and say what you should have said. You can edit a previous post. That’s one thing that distinguishes online commentary from face-to-face contact.

The inevitable result is that you wind up wasting even more of your time trading and revising insults with people you hope you never see, except in their posted vacation photos. (“Sea World, October 2011: Jim sleeps with the fishes.”)

Instead of wasting all that time arguing online, you can just hide what people post to Facebook, or hide all that they post, or unfollow those friends before you’re not friends anymore.

If a friend is citing a questionable source, you can “hide all” from that particular provider, on a drop-down menu in the upper right corner. I made sure a lot of questionable sources never showed up on my Facebook page that way.

Friends and foes

The last thing you have to do is unfriend, if you’ve not done that already with some cutting retort you just couldn’t resist posting, like:

“Oh yeah? Well I had sex with your mother! Literally! We had a fling in 2003! That’s the only reason we’re mutual Facebook friends, you stupid @#$%ing millennial! Remember? Duh!”

“Weren’t you engaged to Aunt Patty then?” he posts.

(“Oh @#$%!” you think, scrolling back to cut your earlier post to “Oh yeah?” But before you can get there ....)

“You cheating SOB!” his aunt posts.

“Idiot!” posts his mother.

“Mom! How could you sleep with that creep?” posts his 13-year-old sister, who no one realized looks just like you until you brought this up.

Next thing you know, you’re in a paternity suit. Why? Because you got so ticked off you just couldn’t resist jumping into a Facebook debate, when all you had to do to get it out of sight and mind was “hide post” or “hide all.”

With the holidays upon us like bed bugs in low-rent lodging, we need to remember we could wind up face-to-face with the people on Facebook, at a family gathering, holiday party or public festival.

We wouldn’t want it erupting into a drunken brawl.

It could spill our drink.

This story was originally published December 4, 2016 at 6:49 PM with the headline "Blot out the Facebook brawl."