The Election is over; Obama has been officially announced the President of the United States for the second time, all the citizens in favor of the winner are rejoicing. But the scene is a bit more upfront on Facebook and Twitter where Obama and Romney supporters are indulging in arguments. The users who were once friends on these sites are unfriending each other.
47% - this is the percentage of people who have unfriended someone on Facebook because of this election, according to our poll from a few hours back (which has 1,500 respondents and counting).
That’s not even counting the folks they have tried to avoid on the social network, since unfriending them would have serious repercussions.
With Thanksgiving coming up users can’t possibly unfriend that liberal relatives of theirs. Some of you have been kind enough not to straight-up unfriend someone as you might feel that such type of behavior is cold. I commend such people.
We already live in the clustered world with more and more of us living in like-minded communities in like-minded states. One group prefers nerdy friends while other others enjoy the company of extrovert personalities.
Social networking site is the place that brings together all these different types of personalities and eventually hoping to inculcate a sense of respect in these individuals for each other’s beliefs. Facebook and Twitter are the places where you’ll see geographically and politically diverse relationships, coming together expressing their views, agreeing and disagreeing each others opinions and comments at the same time.
It’s harder to see dozens of random people agreeing a comment that you don’t like and get buried by people you don’t know if you reply to disagree.
But unfriending someone just because you don’t like the other person’s view is not cool. If such rift is repeated on a national scale, it isn’t good for democracy.
You did like that person, or you wouldn’t have friended them in the first place. Besides, life’s too short, and the distances between us too great, to hold grudges. And it is your patriotic duty to listen to opinions that are different from your own.
Try not to be judgmental. Empathize. What’s their experience, and what might you learn from it?
There’s also a very popular saying that goes, “Try to be nice to everyone because you don’t know what they are going through.” Philosophical but worth putting in practice.
So if you won, don’t blabber about your guy’s success. You get to be the bigger person, so show your humility. It would also be great on your part to reach out to those you unfriended, or who unfriended you. Send them a request now.
For the Republican fans, if you were to reach out to your democratic friends now, you might be surprised to find that they don’t rub it in. They know how much guts a move like that would take.
The President himself reached across the aisle in his victory speech, reprising his very famous 2004 convention speech line- “there are no red states or blue states but only United States.” This thought could help in making a fresh beginning with your friends on Facebook or Twitter.