It’s a story that’s been playing out on Facebook and Twitter with growing frequency among friends, family members, colleagues and acquaintances as an already contentious presidential campaign between Romney and President Barack Obama enters its final, frenzied weeks. Your close friends may share your political views, but that eccentric uncle, former co-worker or high school classmate may not.
Nearly one-fifth of people admit to blocking, unfriending or hiding someone on social media over political postings, according to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. The biggest gripes: The offending person posted too often about politics, disagreed with others’ updates, or bothered mutual friends with partisan political postings.
In five years of using Facebook, I’ve only blocked one person … and it was this Fall. This wasn’t an election-related block, though; it was just that I ultimately got tired of someone I didn’t really know trolling the comments of every post in my Facebook feed.
How many people have you blocked in 2012 due to election-related issues?
Just changed my political persuasion on FB to “Calm Down” in direct reference to stuff like this. Seriously, you will survive if someone disagrees with you.
In Pariah, the Mayor of San Diego appoints a rogue academic with no law enforcement background to run a task force using Freakonomics-inspired alternative methods of policing. This causes an uproar within the police department as the morally conflicted, conspiracy-minded academic solves crimes by conducting his controversial experiments on citizens of the city.
This idea is so weird that it could be awesome. Next up? A legal drama based on the concepts of Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point.”
Watch this video. Feel good about Scott Brown. Then, after you’re done watching the clip of the Massachusetts senator draining a three pointer from half-court, know that Democrats in the state are using this as evidence that the Senator is improperly using taxpayer money to shoot campaign videos, as this video was shot by one of his staffers. Now the answer to that is “uh, of course not, because the congressional staffer was just lucky enough to catch Scott Brown shoot an underhand three pointer from half-court.” But Democrats in Massachusetts are facing trouble of their own, with Elizabeth Warren continuing to face questions about whether she improperly claimed to be Native American during her educational career. But maybe you don’t care about any of that. In that case, we recommend you just watch the video. source
In case you wanted an excuse to rip out your hair this morning, here you go: House Republicans balked on the Senate’s payroll tax-cut extension, which passed their chamber without issue on Friday but now is suddenly the target of 11th hour drama in the House. The Senate’s already gone home, so re-herding the cats would be very tough at this point. But on the other hand, Democrats can easily pin the blame for this one. Anyway, House Republicans: Do you guys not know the definition of “Christmas”?
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