My weekend started with me declaring my long-held view that cancel culture is bunk, then had me distancing myself from an acquaintance, then seeing my wife having to leave a social media group because of bullying.
Check, please.
No, I’m good.
No dessert, just the check.
First, to what brought cancel culture close to home for me. It was a friend who was making an issue of highlighting folks who had gone to D.C. last week to protest the Electoral College vote, the suggestion being that we shouldn’t do business with people who were there.
Which made me think: you know, I make my living running a center-left news website, do not hide the fact that I’m a former local Democratic Party chair, plenty of reasons for people to not want to do business with me.
And if you don’t, you don’t, and if you tell me, it’s not going to change what I think, or make me pull back in terms of being a voice for how I think things ought to be going.
So, I make this clear. Can we cut it with the cancel culture?
The world, at this point, laughs at me, in the form of an over-the-top social media post from the acquaintance.
The gist of it: you Democrats can go to hell.
Damn.
Seriously?
The tough thing is, this acquaintance, super nice guy, also someone I’ve done business with – gone out of my way to do business with, in fact, because I know him, and prefer to give my money to people that I know as opposed to faceless, nameless corporate entities.
It’s hard to reconcile that with: you Democrats can go to hell.
It’s one thing to be on different sides of government budgeting, the delivery of healthcare, foreign policy, social issues.
You think one thing, strongly, I think another, just as strongly, we discuss, agree to disagree.
Democrats can go to hell?
I can’t unknow that, unfortunately.
My wife writes about this, then, in a private social media group, set up by a friend for fellow liberals to be able to discuss life issues in a safe space.
Two people in this group call her out for not identifying the Republican friend in the story, apparently so they could trumpet boycotting the guy.
The term “white privilege” is used as a bludgeon.
So much for that safe space.
Weekend summary: broken relationships all over.
Thanks, social media.
It’s been several years since I pared my Facebook friend list down to about five, and only left it up because my wife wants to be able to tag me in photos.
Twitter, primarily, is cute dog pics and videos that I send to my wife, because I know she likes cute dog pics and videos.
I pine for the days when I didn’t know what people really, deep down, thought, when we could at least pretend to be nice to each other, pretend to be civil.
Even into the early days of social media, it was so innocent.
Hey, I like “Seinfeld” and DMB, too! And dogs!
Nice to know there are others out there like me!
Now that the toothpaste is out of the tube, we all know full well that we all suck royally at basic human decency, and don’t deserve the world that we thought we’d created for ourselves.
The only thing redeeming about any of it: dogs.
Story by Chris Graham
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