One narrative that sounds pretty silly upon examination is,
"You can't just delete anyone from your friends list who disagrees with
you! Real life doesn't work like that." I understand the message; that
it's impossible to avoid interacting with others who have a clashing worldview.
That's true, but is rarely a person's actual goal.
We all know people we disagree
with fundamentally on a variety of topics, and with whom we share virtually no
values. Working, going to school with, and living
among them is a necessary facet of belonging to human society. Learning how to
talk to people we don't agree with is an important skill. But that doesn't mean
we're obligated to listen to hateful, willfully ignorant, and destructive ideas
in a setting where that's actually optional. I don't believe that every opinion
that opposes mine is harmful, nor am I certain that I'm correct about
everything. But I have blocked, deleted, and sometimes just unfollowed people
for repeatedly posting malicious things. Opinions like "females are
thots", "[X minority racial group] are disgusting," "Gay
people deserve to be murdered," "Jews are greedy" and "Poor
people are lazy moochers" are not nuanced, original ideas I've never
previously been exposed to. They're so common that they're longstanding
stereotypes. Saying you hate a group or that they should die/be severely
punished for their existence is not an argument. Calling a group a name is not
an argument; it's just a slur. Granted, that may also apply to calling certain
ideologies bigoted—that saying they're bigoted isn't making an argument; just
calling a name—and maybe I'm less likely to notice that because of my own
biases. But when I say something is bigoted, I'm probably venting instead of
trying to persuade others to agree, because it doesn't seem possible to
persuade someone who's just shouting slurs. The slur-shouters honestly think
they have a valid theory you need to hear, though, and that you're doing
yourself a disservice by closing that channel. They also seem to think their ideas
are unique and rebellious. Those who disagree are well aware that a more
progressive stance is not unusual, and that it doesn't have to be unique to
have value.
