Good morning: Facebook status updates become public forum for political anguish
By Julie Crothers, November 7, 2008
Tuesday night as I watched the election results roll in, I opened my laptop and went to the top breaking-news site: Facebook.
I felt like it was my duty to update the world on my candidate being elected president. I was appalled to find that some 200 of my closest “friends” had already beaten me to the punch. And some weren’t too happy.
Some of the earliest status updates included:
* “… you gotta be kidding me America.”
* “… is packing her bags and leaving for Canada”
* “… is there goes the American dream.”
Really? I thought the American dream was something to be cherished. Yet there it was, rejected by hundreds of bitter voters bound for the Great Blue North.
Even waking up Wednesday morning, hundreds more statuses flooded my screen, like this one: “… is well, I thought it might just be a bad dream, but I woke up this morning and it’s true… Obama won.”
Facebookers are going public with their political views in a critical way.
I paused my hitting of the “more” button to consider the possible motives behind posting such slander on the Internet.
How would I justify the statuses of my Facebook frenzied friends?
Perhaps I will chalk this experience up as 21st Century arguing, or just to my incredibly opinionated “friends” using a space entitled “What are you doing right now?” to express themselves.
Maybe no one took the opportunity to inform my fellow Facebookers that the status bar was meant more for petty updates about the joys of cancelled classes or the weather.
Regardless, the arguing taking place within the sites of my peers is little more than uninformed post-election mudslinging.
Complaining about the outcome of our next American leader at the top of your Facebook homepage isn’t going to do an ounce of good. It’s insensitive, unintelligent and in all regards, rather tacky.
And if you’d like to move to Canada, go ahead and tuck your tail between your legs and by all means, be my guest.
Oh, and my Facebook status? Julie is “Obama won... end of story. So stop whining, really.”
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