Dear Posters of Politics and Religion on Facebook

Dear Posters of Politics and Religion on Facebook,

This is why I hate/love you.

Alright you silly Facebookers, listen. We get it. You have opinions, great. And you want to share those opinions, cool. But look, here’s the deal. If you’re going to post about how much you love/hate Barack Obama or why God is great/doesn’t exist, well, expect to get some shit for it. If you’re going to share YOUR opinions, others can share THEIR opinions. That’s the way it works. If you don’t like it, don’t do it. Believe it or not you actually get to make that choice all by yourself. But please keep on doing it, it gives a lot of us some great entertainment.

Honestly, I love when people post about their stances and argue for them. If they have a good argument, even if I don’t personally agree, I still respect them more, if not, well… at least they consciously have chosen to take a stance. My agreement or disagreement doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean we can’t be friends anymore. This brings me to my first point: don’t unfriend people because of their statuses.

Posting on someone’s wall that you’re unfriending them for something they posted just makes you, the unfriender, look like an ass. Okay okay, if they posted some crazy shit about nazis or puppy killing, you definitely should feel free to unfriend them and maybe spread the word to the police, but otherwise, pipe down and get over yourself. If you really disagree with their opinions so much, how did you become friends in the first place? And if you’re really such a piece of dick that you can’t just say, well we don’t share the same opinions politically/religiously, so I hate them forever end of story, then well you’re never going to have any friends. People are who they are. No one will ever possibly share the exact same beliefs as you. It’s time you got used to it and accepted it.

Look, sharing our political and religious beliefs is a great way to learn and grow. Sure, some people take it too far. There are plenty of people out there who say Obama is the messiah, while just as many say he’s the antichrist. They’re both bat-shit-crazy. But the majority of people either agree with his policies or disagree with them. If you see a post that you disagree with, don’t immediately hold it against the person who posted it and engage in a battle of the dimwits. This brings me to my second point: Do some fucking research.

First, know where to get correct information. If you’re just looking at Huffington Post or FoxNews, you’re not going to get real information. Look at sources from both biases. Read newspapers from Europe and Canada. Dig a little. If you’re sitting there thinking, wow, that’s a lot of work, but you feel strongly enough to make a comment in opposition to the post, you’re an idiot. And lazy. Don’t be THAT GUY who argues against a post with a comment that the next twenty commenters lay down arguments refuting. Do your research, know what you’re talking about, and draft an intelligent, informed counterargument. If that sounds like too much work,then just post a silly picture of a cat eating a cheeseburger and be on your way.

What you have to realize is that when someone makes a post about something they feel strongly about, it’s not going to change their mind when you comment that they’re a dumbass. A reasoned response might actually make the original poster think for a second and maybe look at it from your angle, but for the most part, it’s like telling someone that green is actually not as good a color as blue and they’re small-minded for thinking that it could ever even compare. I think we can all agree puppies are cute and a cat can do no wrong on the internet. So if you’re looking to share opinions and don’t want to get people’s blood pressures rising, post a pic of an adorable Pomsky (husky/Pomeranian) puppy (like the one down there) and get on with your life. That’s my plan anyway.

Because dogs are better than cats. =D

The Trouble With ‘Positive’ Stereotypes

In my last entry, I wrote about the controversy surrounding Volkswagen’s “Get Happy” commercial that aired during the Super Bowl, which featured a white guy with a Jamaican accent going around his office trying to cheer up his coworkers. While many Americans called the ad racist and culturally insensitive, Jamaicans seemed to thoroughly embrace it.

I didn’t find the ad racist, but I will admit that it did promote a single stereotype about the Jamaican culture, albeit a positive one.  I normally really don’t like stereotypes, positive or negative, but I concluded that if Jamaicans didn’t have a problem with the ad, then neither should I.

I still don’t find Volkswagen’s ad to be offensive, but today I read about a study (link below) that got me thinking more about positive stereotypes and the negative consequences they may have on our perception of the world.  I never really considered about how harmful they could be, but this study suggests that they may be even more damaging than obvious negative stereotypes.

http://www.fuqua.duke.edu/news_events/releases/aaron-kay-positive-stereotypes/#.USmts-vwL4w

While negative stereotypes are pretty easy to recognize and dismiss,  “positive” stereotypes tend to fall into a grey area that people are more willing to believe.  For example, many accept without question the idea that women are inherently more nurturing than men, as well as the stereotype that Asian people are naturally more intelligent than people of other races.  These ideas don’t immediately register as harmful, since they seem to flatter the groups they characterize.

In the study, researchers showed participants one of three fake scientific articles presenting “evidence” for prevalent stereotypes about African-Americans.  The first article argued that black people are more athletically inclined (positive stereotype), the second showed that they more prone to violence (negative stereotype), and the third showed that they are less intelligent (negative stereotype) than people of other races.

Naturally, participants were more likely to believe the stereotypes after being exposed to the made-up data.   But what came as a shock was that exposure to the positive stereotype (“athletically inclined”) seemed to lead to stronger negative beliefs about black people than did exposure to the negative stereotypes (“unintelligent” and “prone to violence”).

Participants who read the article showing greater athletic propensity among black people were far more likely than participants in the other two groups to accept the evidence they read as fact.  People in this group were also more likely to believe that the differences between blacks and whites were biological in nature, rather than socially learned.

At the end of the study, participants were shown pictures of people and asked to estimate the likelihood that each person might cheat or commit a crime.  Of the three groups, the participants who had been exposed to the “positive” stereotype estimated the highest probability that black people would break the law.  That is, people who read that African-Americans are more athletic were more likely to distrust black people than were the participants in the groups that read cases for explicitly negative attributes.

The researchers concluded that positive stereotypes “may be uniquely capable of reinforcing cultural stereotypes and beliefs that people explicitly eschew as racist and harmful.”

I think this is definitely something to keep in mind, especially when coming up with ads that are going reach a huge audience.  I wonder if the creatives behind the “Get Happy” ad still would have gone through with it if they had read about this study.