Staying Focused
I’m writing about how to post on Facebook with people you (I) disagree with.
I’m writing about how I’m deciding to do it.
This is about responding to things other people have posted.
Here are some guidelines. In no order. This is not a polished draft.
Don’t do it, first of all. Instead of commenting, notice your heart rate, the heat response in your body. If it’s rising, scroll on. The game is to get you to be aroused in anger and to respond from that arousal. If you do that, you lose. If you scroll on, you win.
If you are okay going into it, remember that you are observing yourself here, as much as you are doing anything else. Note when you are able to
Stick to one thing. one thing. ONEEEEEE THING!!!! I swear to god, stick to one thing. (Sorry, my blood pressure rose there.)
If they respond to your one thing with something else, or with three something elses, respond with something like: I’d like to keep this very focused. I’m very intentional about how I spend my energy, especially in online discussions. Please answer just this question.
If they keep derailing, say something like, As I said, I’d like to keep this very focused. I’m only willing to continue in this interaction if we can talk about just one thing. Do you agree to that? And if they don’t agree, respectfully exit the conversation.
Stay respectful. If needed, make it explicit and clear that you are being intentionally respectful. If you get disrespectful, and decide to continue the interaction, acknowledge and apologize for the disrespect. Or, exit the conversation. Don’t stay in it if you can’t stay respectful.
Seek clarity about what they’re saying and the source of their belief. Don’t try to change their mind. If you end up catching them in a contradiction, ask if they’d like to rephrase or clarify in light of the contradiction. If they find themselves citing a falsely sourced belief, ask if anything about their perspective changes. Do not present them with new stuff, the source of your beliefs, anything like that, unless they specifically and explicitly ask.
If the conversation is going well (this hasn’t happened for me yet) and you feel like they might be open to it, you can ask if they are open to hearing your perspective.
I WANT to interact with people I disagree with. I want to find that edge where someone disagrees with me without triggering me, and surf it like a wave. I think it’s stimulating and interesting. And, if one well, it’s good for humanity.
I see approximately ZERO! PEOPLE! doing this well, over my entire Facebook. All the smart people I’m friends with, reduced to the most basic, childish forms of back-and-forth and inept moralizing.
The energy I’m drawing from is Canada Dating Coach. She comes up on my instagram sometimes. I’m not super interested in her area of focus (dating, the gender war, etc) but there’s something about her raw clear autistic energy that is really inspiring to me. In the past, I’ve seen her just catching clueless guys in her web and having them utterly fail to respect the terms she sets, and I’ve felt intrigued and amused but also a little bit generally grossed out by these videos. (That gross-out is not a rational reaction, I think I just … find the whole situation kinda sad.) But in the last week or so I’ve seen longer, respectful, productive conversations with her that struck such a chord in me and sort of rewired my brain.
And then this cop got in my DMs wanting to talk about Alex Pretti over private message and I found myself suddenly very guarded and clear. Private message is a way different medium from public comment, and I realized that I was either going to just block him immediately or else the conversation was going to stay on very tight guardrails. I kept it on really tight guardrails and felt satisfied with it.
The thing about FB comment conversations is not only are they really low-level and full of moralizing and insults without communicating anything except animosity, but nobody ever stays on one topic. If one person ever feels uncomfortable or unable to answer something specifically, they just slide over to some other complaint rather than taking the L. (I usually see this on Red Team.) And then blue team ALWAYS! TAKES THE BAIT! AND SLIDES RIGHT OVER TOO!
DON’T TAKE THE BAIT!!!! Don’t get distracted. Stay focused and respectful or stay out of the conversation.
I think it is GOOD to have respectful interactions. I don’t think the question is red versus blue, it’s associative-superstitious/tribal-based versus truth-seeking/humanity-centered. So what if my team has more “right” points on the “right vs wrong” scoreboard? If we can’t get beyond the tribalism we’ll all be going together when we go.
“And we will all bake together when we bake.
There’ll be nobody present at the wake.
With complete participation
In that grand incineration,
Nearly three billion hunks of well-done steak.”
Lmao
Love this.
I just got back on Facebook after over a decade away, but this time from the perspective of a “Page” (i.e., content creator).
The comments are such a different flavor than TikTok. People want to use a given post as a platform to tell their own story and project their own experience onto whatever they’re responding to. Often, they don’t seem to consciously realize they’re doing this.
I give them a wide berth, mostly, and I don’t mind if they disagree with my ideas (Thanks for the engagement!) but I get out the block button when they start telling me what to do (“You should rethink this entire account”) and/or make personal attacks.
My favorite is when they call me out ON MY OWN PAGE for being insulting or disrespectful. It’s like barging into someone’s house and tracking mud into their living room to tell them that they should have said “thank you” to the cashier at the supermarket. 😆