Hate-speech

& Facebook.

Social media is everyone’s favorite outlet now. You can share your feelings, pictures, videos, or pictures and videos about your feelings. There is no topic unturned. You can be scrolling through your feed and find a picture expressing gay pride right above a news article about ISIS; Someone’s favorite music lyrics are next to a video of a toddler being beaten by a grown woman. The internet has everything, and social media is where you go to find everything viral and popular.

Unfortunately, viral and popular does not always mean of good taste.

Have you ever added or followed someone and later realized they are not who you thought they were… at all? Well, sometimes I feel like this is the story of my (Facebook)life. I have come to know people in/from many parts of the world and all walks of life. I have friends who have doctorates and friends in prison. Old friends, new friends, red friends, blue friends. But even with all of the culture I have tried giving to myself, all of the personality experience I have gained, I still have terrible judgement of character.

I assume that since someone seems nice the first few times we met that they actually are. I also assume that my family members all think similarly to myself. Big mistake, right? Well, Facebook has taught me this many times. I add a new friend, later to see posts on their wall about getting rid of all the Muslims or not allowing homosexuals to adopt children. Something crazy. I have family that I have come to find are so close-minded you couldn’t get in there with the torture and water-boarding they support.

What bothers me the most about all of this is that it keeps happening, and it isn’t always through new faces. Even as one topic begins to die, for example: the uproar over same-sex marriage being made legal everywhere, something new surfaces and shows me never-before-seen sides of some of my oldest family and friends. Sometimes, I cannot bring myself to say anything about their deplorable statements and actions — usually because they are family — and other times I cannot help but refute their arguments with one of my own.

What I have come to learn through this is that nothing I have done thus far has made a difference. People still hate and wish bad upon each other, and not a word I have said or typed has caused for second thought.

But I won’t give up. I can’t.

I may not have made a difference yet, but perhaps, metaphorically speaking, I have loosened the top on a lot of hateful pasta jars. Maybe someone else will come along with a stronger argument than I, and they will break through and finally open these people up into a world with more acceptance and dreams of peace. This may seem like a naive dream in itself, but if you give up, the only thing you know for sure that you will never succeed.

PS. Disallowing someone the same human rights as yourself is different from having an opinion. Fin.