So my old friend posts a bunch of liberal political stuff on his wall. After I can't take any more I post my opnion why all this stuff is in error. Next thing I know, the whole thread is deleted, or at least not visible to me.

Was it impolite to post an opposing opinion on his wall?

Is he upset with me?

Is it okay to disagree with a liberal?

Got my own answer to a couple of these questions.

I had lunch with him and his family today.

I think he was a little offended, but didn't say anything about it.

We are not communicating on the same level anymore as we used to.

We discussed Rice (he is a fellow alumni) and the conference realignment stuff.

We are now average guys.

I won't post anything on his Facebook wall anymore. In fact I am off of Facebook completely except for when my kids bug me about it.

Personally I think if somebody posts something political they should be prepared for whatever response results from it. I post a lot of political stuff and get hardly any response. I figure that most people have removed my posts from their news stream.

Personally, I don't want to hear about anyone's politics on Facebook. I just want to see baby pictures & the like from old friends. The way i look at it all y'all were both out of line.

I told my wife I've learned a lesson about Facebook. It is not very good for having any philisophical discussions. It's good for shallow "how are you doing?" chit chat. That's about it. Thus, my decision to avoid it. I have very little tolerance for shallow banter, especially when I have to login and type it out.

You can disagree with a liberal.

That said, Facebook feels more like a family/class reunion where its best to avoid politics and religion.

Still enjoy the kid pictures and catching up generally tho'.

I've actually had some pretty good philosophical discussions on Facebook. There are the inevitable trolls, but otherwise I've found it to have a more civil tone for such discussions that you get in places like the spin room on here.

It's not facebook but you guys should check out my half-brother's blog at sovernnation.com - he is a reporter for KCBS in San Francisco and has been in the news quite a bit. Most recently his chance encounter with Jerry Brown made national headlines for Doug reporting some of the stuff Brown said to him casually in the Oakland hills.

Doug is liberal - probably more so than me - so it's ironic the blog has becoming a major topic of conversation on some right-wing talk shows. I'm not sure I agree with him repeating the conversation. I doubt it destroys Brown's campaign but it certainly won't help him. Probably Brown himself can destroy it on his own.

And to sort of answer the original question, I'm not a facebook fan at all. I figure posting on sites like this is more than enough. I'm not sure how that site, twitter and just texting in general is now considered so vogue when the same general forms of communication have been around for so long in the electronic age.

Several years ago, there was a study by Rice professors about conflict resolution and communication mode that I think may be relevant. The upshot is that any impersonal mode - online, email, etc. - is much worse than face-to-face communication. Basically: face-to-face >> phone >> facebook >> email. The reason is that you can't detect any non-verbal queues with online communication - you don't know whether your friend was pounding the keyboard in a real tizzy or typing with a smirk on his face and a 'who cares' attitude.

All of that said, unless you dropped an f-bomb or two, this incident says a lot about your friend.

Only part of your post that I would question is the "face-to-face >> phone >> facebook >> email." Seems to me it should be face-to-face >> phone >> email >> facebook simply because the first three are ostensibly personal while the 4th is very public.

(06-15-2010 10:40 AM)RiceDoc Wrote:  Only part of your post that I would question is the "face-to-face >> phone >> facebook >> email." Seems to me it should be face-to-face >> phone >> email >> facebook simply because the first three are ostensibly personal while the 4th is very public.

They can be private (unless facebook ***** up the privacy settings again). They're roughly the same, but Facebook adds a thumbs up feather...