Topical Blog Post #14

Going off of my experiment last week, this week I posted something that was much less controversial. My post literally said this "I don't understand how some people choose not to eat meat. If I could have an all meat diet, I would" This post was not confrontational to anyone. But here are three responses that I got.
"What you don't think vegans are people too? People like you are what's wrong with the world"

"well you are what you eat--a pig" (lol at that one)

"good thing you like to murder thousands of innocent animals" (she then posted a link to an article that was about factory farming).

I was shocked that a post this simple and about MY PERSONAL PREFERENCES got that much attention and people were actually offended by it. While this post wasn't necessarily political, it demonstrates that people attack almost anything you say on social media. It is dividing us more and more and the "discussions" that take place are close to meaningless.

Topical Blog Post #13

Today I shared two different articles on my Facebook feed as an experiment. I posted one article that was for abortion and one article that was against it and I waited to see what people's reactions to my posts would be. The results were very similar with each article. On the one that was for abortion, some people commented how they agreed with the article. However, there were about six or seven comments made that attacked the view. Rather than attacking the article, they attacked me. I was called a "baby-killer", "murderer" and one person said they were going to unfriend me. On the article against abortion, the same thing happened. Only now people told me how disgusted they were that I thought I had the power to tell woman what to do with their bodies. One woman said "wow you're against abortion? I imagine you're against woman's rights and the LGBT community too right? Honestly people like you disgust me, idk how you can even live with yourself honestly" Pretty dramatic stuff. I thought i drove my point that it is impossible to have a real discussion on social media. It really is a battle ground.

Topical Blog Post #12

Here is a link to a article that states how social media is dividing/polarizing America's political sphere:
http://pac.org/does-social-media-drive-polarization/

This article is a good summary of my argument that social media is polarizing politics and why that might be the case.