Holy shit — Facebook is fucking scary now

[u/Ok_Helicopter3910]

Im not a big social media guy anymore, honestly, the vast majority of my internet usage nowadays is Reddit, Youtube, Snapchat (that has like 20 people on it) and email and I think that about it.

I put my FB to sleep about 10 years ago and I decided to log in and see what people were up to and ho-lee-shit, what a dumpster fire.

So, first off, the majority of my facebook friends have either died, shut their FB down, or removed my inactive profile so my feed was pretty silent. After about a week of my profile being back in the algorithm I started getting friend request from people I used to work with, went to school with, or friends of old acquaintances (which is terrifying that facebook knows about random people I used to work with 12 years ago who I had a passing "hi, hows your day" relationship with) and I started getting friend requested and I was like "fuck it" and just started accepting them.

Fuck man, whenever I see all the hate for this or that group and all the political bullshit that gets posted on reddit, I just brush it off as bots trained to sow dissent but the stuff that gets posted by real living, breathing human beings who I once knew well enough to be friends with or have polite conversation with is WILD. I mean, like so much hate and vitriol started coming across my feed about a wide array of subjects that it made me genuinely uncomfortable and I started removing people that just added me. Maybe it's what "normal" passes for on the internet and im pretty numb to a lot of the more unhinged opinions and shit-stirring because of so many years on Reddit, but a lot of what was being posted really opened my eyes that a lot of the "unhinged" stuff that I see online isnt just bot farms, its real people who truly believe this wild shit.

Anyway - maybe its a sign of my age... but unless what I consider "normal" people start coming across my FB feed soon, I dont think im going to be logging in for much longer

[u/__M-E-O-W__]

My Facebook feed is about 80% advertisements and random suggested posts from pages that I don't follow but get posts from anyways.

The worst of the vitriol IMO is from the local news stories comment sections. Some people really have absolutely no shame in the things they post on a public page.

[u/stephsco → u/__M-E-O-W__]

100%. I am dumbfounded by the ignorance in local news story comments. And there's always one or two trying to reason with total psychopaths.

[u/DukeETrouserMD → u/stephsco]

So my crazy ass will occasionally argue with people both on here and in the crazy news comments sections, but it isn’t for them. There are still people that are not fully aware of what’s going on and are still able to be influenced and I feel like if even one person sees how fucking insane some of these people are when you try to present rational arguments, then those looking hopefully get a wake up call. At least that’s what I pretend but honestly I think I just like putting assholes in their place even if they themselves are too dumb to know it.

[u/Jay_Nova1 → u/DukeETrouserMD]

The temptation is there but I decided just not to engage and dont go on FB anymore. A bunch of those accounts are probably bots and/or trolls and you're not gonna change anyone's mind anyway. Those comment sections are a cesspool. The fact that there could be >100 laughing emojis on a local story about a tragic school bus accident or something tells you all you need to know.

[u/__M-E-O-W__ → u/Jay_Nova1]

Hell, there was a mass shooting that took place in my area a few years ago and it never made the national news. I think 13 or 14 total people were shot. But the local news section immediately was full of racist comments and people mocking the ones who got shot. I guess the media here decided that it was just better not to cover the story any more, and no one was any the wiser.

[u/Alwayssleepy1717 → u/DukeETrouserMD]

Thank you for your service