Trump victory prompts Americans to block each other on social media
He thought maybe the armchair political punditry on social media would die down after the Nov. 8 presidential election, and people would get back to posting photos of their families and food. Bob Swaim was wrong. During a lunch break on a recent Tuesday in downtown Oklahoma City, the straight-ticket Republican couldn’t count how many people he unfollowed on social media during the campaign and he’s already dropped one person online since the election.
Then Meryl Streep took a swipe at President-elect Donald Trump during her acceptance speech for the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globes ceremony. Trump fired back on Twitter and all heck broke loose again on social media.
“You just get tired of seeing it,” he said.
Swaim is not alone in suffering from social media fatigue, after an election that offered any American with a keyboard and free time the opportunity to become a smartphone soldier for the cause, a tablet troop shooting emoji-laced hot takes on the news of the day. The fight continues. Fire back and you might yourself unfriended.
In a December survey of 1,004 people, the Public Religion Research Institute found that since the election, 13 percent of Americans unfriended, blocked or stopped following someone on social media because of what they posted about politics.
Democrats are more likely to banish someone to social media purgatory for their political posts, at 24 percent. Fewer than 10 percent of Republicans and independents do so, according to the institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research group.
Women are twice as likely as men to report cutting people from their social media because of political views expressed, and 30 percent of Democratic women say they kicked someone out of their online social network because of their politics.
When it comes to Democratic women clicking away the people they disagree with, one political observer suggested it may be because the election stoked some of the most toxic rhetoric on record.
“Democratic women have probably found the political environment to be more offensive this year,” said Keith Gaddie, chairman of the political science department at the University of Oklahoma.
Our inner trolls
Nasty campaigns are nothing new in American presidential politics. Gaddie pointed to the 1800 campaign, when President John Adams and Vice President Thomas Jefferson waged a back-and-forth for the ages.
During the campaign, the Yale University president, a supporter of Adams, warned that if Jefferson won the election, “we would see our wives and daughters the victims of legal prostitution.”
A journalist, whose work had been funded by Jefferson, wrote that Adams “behaved neither like a man nor like a woman but instead possessed a hideous hermaphroditical character.”
In modern times, Gaddie blames cable news for much of the rancor on social media. He said when the media spins a Trump tweet into a 24-hour news cycle, it is the “cheapest kind of journalism.”
When that kind of reporting is shared on social media, it makes Americans yell at Twitter and Facebook the same way they used to yell at their TV sets and radios, Gaddie said.
“What happens is they come to social media because it’s supposed to be a distraction from things that are serious, and it turns into reality for people, even though it’s just a bunch of pixels in space,” he said.
And Trump just might be a mirror to people who post noxious comments online.
“People have always had this in them,” Gaddie said. “It’s just for the first time, one of the people that had this in them was a candidate. We had a troll running for president and he brought out the inner troll in other people. It fed the environment.”
‘It’s very dangerous’
The environment is so bad that even one social media expert said he’s adjusted his Facebook settings so that he’s not constantly bombarded with people’s opinions.
Patrick Allmond, 47, owner of Focus Digital Marketing Agency in Oklahoma City, said he treats Facebook like a business platform and accepts nearly every “friend” request he receives.
“There’s so much vitriol going on on Facebook,” he said. “It’s possible for me to see 25 different opinions on race, religion and politics at any given time.”
To those who post acerbic political comments online, Allmond warned that it might come back to bite you. Future employers will look into your social media posts. Careers could be at stake.
“It’s very dangerous,” Allmond said. “If you’re the kind of person who is concerned about your reputation at all, you need to be very picky and choosy about what you put out on social media.”
‘I’m close to blocking you’
For some, like aerospace worker Andrea Jones in Oklahoma City, a social media dust up over politics can be fun.
The self-described libertarian said she never blocks anyone over politics, because to do so would be to admit defeat. Jones has been blocked by others.
“I’ll have people messaging me, saying ‘I’m close to blocking you,’ and I’m like go for it honey,” she said. “It’s like they can’t counter your ideas. The moment they block me they can’t take the truth.”
Favorite topics for Jones, 29, include human rights and laws that she thinks are overreaching. She likes to play Devil’s Advocate when someone veers away from ideas and starts attacking people, especially when they try to show their opponents in the worst light. She’s defended Trump and Bernie Sanders when they were attacked personally, or when someone posted fake news about them.
Jones wasn’t surprised that the survey showed Democrats are more likely to drop someone from their social media network.
Most of those who blocked or unfollowed her were on the left, she said. Mainly, they couldn’t take the exchange of ideas without losing their cool, she said.
“A lot of people that cling to the left, they’re very emotionally driven, that’s why they go with a lot of the social movements, because it’s not a logic-based position, it’s an emotion-based philosophy,” Jones said.
She’s been blocked so many times, she makes sport of it.
“At some point, if someone gets too angry at me, I try to get them to block me,” she said.