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Thread: Real life friends who are idiots on Facebook

  1. #1
    Site Supporter Maple Syrup Actual's Avatar
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    Real life friends who are idiots on Facebook

    Does this happen to everyone? They have some friend, probably from ages ago, who is a pretty decent person in real life, but a complete idiot on Facebook?

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    This guy is pretty all right, as long as you never mention the Federal Reserve, the Bilderberg group, the Rothschilds, or probably a hundred other trigger words that launch him on a tirade of ridiculousness. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of music, particularly the 50s through the 70s, not just the billboard top 100 of the day but every B-side of every Chess recording, every experimental record like Electric Mud... One day I was suddenly seized with a desire to hear a song I knew fairly well (I can't even remember what it was right now) but with more pronounced female backup vocals so I called him and he immediately just said "Oh the Ronettes (or something, I forget who for the life of me) recorded that in '57, it's on Youtube." I mean really, the guy is all right.

    But holy cow man, my FB is the worst place for a guy like that because half my friends are berzerk libertarians with crazy senses of humour, and the other half are cops, soldiers, or some combination of the two, and they all talk big ideas and it sets the guy off.

    But I really don't want to pound on him, because in person, he's all right. I briefly played guitar for a band he was in, although it was just too much work to try to keep up with the insane library of songs he always wanted to perform. I basically don't know any songs I didn't write, so I was a terrible pick for that project. Anyway a decent guy, but what do you do with a guy like that? Put a disclaimer on your page? I'm friends with this guy, but...only kind of? Or is having a guy like this around so common that everyone is just like "what a nut. Oh well."


    Pointless venting, but seriously. I am kicking back with a drink and looking at my rapidly growing list of notifications and just shaking my head here.
    This is a thread where I built a boat I designed and which I very occasionally update with accounts of using it, which is really fun as long as I'm not driving over logs and blowing up the outboard.
    https://pistol-forum.com/showthread....ilding-a-skiff

  2. #2
    My persona is raspy enough that I figure if they tolerate most of my shit, I can tolerate most of theirs.

  3. #3
    I’ve got a friend, a really a good guy, And he’s an avid Bernie supporter. With a Scar heavy topped with a S&B short dot. Go figure

  4. #4
    I'm not on Facebook, on the general theory that either one of my friends will embarrass me, or that I'll have to explain why one of them is too embarrassing to be my Facebook friend, or that one day the normal shit I say now will be the crazy shit that will be embarrassing to my agency.

  5. #5
    Site Supporter 0ddl0t's Avatar
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    I seem to be that person...


    PS: Why is the "midwest" in the eastern half of the continental US?

  6. #6
    Site Supporter Bigghoss's Avatar
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    I have some Trump supporter friends and one uncle that buy into the idea that COVID-19 is a hoax and that wearing a mask is bad for you. And they're assholes about it. I took a break from Facebook a couple months ago but I think when I get back on there eventually I'll be unfriending them. Anyone that makes me dread getting a notification on FB isn't my friend.
    Quote Originally Posted by MattyD380 View Post
    Because buying cool, interesting guns I don't need isn't a decision... it's a lifestyle...

  7. #7
    Member
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    northern Virginia
    Yeah, I've got a friend like that, but some of the details are different.

    He was my running partner for 10 years. Almost every weekend, we'd go for a run together and then coffee afterwards. We ran lots of races together, also. I also worked with him off and on for over 20 years, and he's a neighbor.

    He is one of the smartest people I've ever met, and since I work in science and technology, I've met a lot of smart people. I remember picking up our packets for the Cherry Blossom 10 miler one year. It was the usual overcrowded inefficient goat rope manned by some kind volunteers. As we stood in line for too long, he analyzed the situation and kept pointing out how it should have been set up. "If they just would've put the tables there, and then had people do this...." Yeah, I do that myself sometimes, but I'm an amateur to him.

    That was all well and good, until 2016, especially November 2016. His Facebook feed turned into TDS, typically with three posts a day. Off the rails. I finally snoozed him, or whatever that is so that I don't have to see it every day. I also haven't run with him since then.

    I don't think he has the encyclopedic knowledge of music that your guy has, but my friend likes Bob Dylan. When we'd head out for our 0700 runs and he was driving and got to choose the music, that would just put me right back to sleep. However, my friend has his encyclopedic knowledge of math and science. Again, I can hang with pretty big people, but I have limits - and a life.

    Here's a story: We were doing the Disney Marathon one year, running side by side. We were maybe seven miles into the race. My friend is doing base 60 math, saying if we drop our pace to xx:xx per mile we could finish by y:yy or something. At this point, a nuclear explosion could've happened in front of us and he wouldn't notice. While he's doing this, I'm listening but I'm also looking past him, and I spot a very attractive runner bouncing her way along the route. I interrupt him with reality and priorities and whisper "dude, look left." He does, is pleasantly rewarded with a nice view, and loses his train of thought for the next mile or two.

  8. #8
    Site Supporter rob_s's Avatar
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    SE FL
    Social media will be our undoing in many levels. Knowing ore than we ever should about what goes on in the minds of our own friends is one of them.

    I’m sure I’ve shared this story before...

    In the early 2000s I started shooting with a local IDPA club. It was great. Everyone got along, but then we really only saw each other on average 2x a month and even then it was hard to hold a conversation what with the ear protection and loud noises and all. This was also something like club #2 of all IDPA clubs.

    Then they added a forum to the club website.

    Turns out, every single one of them (us?) was a complete and utter nutbag. One was an insane militia type (who I hear now lives in the woods with others of his ilk). One was a disgraced former pool company tractor who turned out to be lying about being a lawyer. Some were even democrats! Then some folks started using the forum to air club dirty Lau dry, rallying other dipshits to their cause, creating strife where heretofore there had been none. People were suddenly indignant about issues they didn’t even know existing 6 months prior.

    All of a sudden, we all knew way too much about one another. Everyone was great friends on the range and at the bar afterwards, where the limited opportunities for communication pretty much limited our talk to the subject we all had in common (shooting), but once we had broader access to the opinions and thoughts of one another. The club very nearly imploded!

    I have several close friends that I keep on “ignore” on facebook. For one thing, I’m rather embarrassed for them about the volume of their posts, and for another the content of said posts can be equally embarrassing, and for a third the fact that they seem to think that their rants in Facebook are having any sort of positive outcome is perhaps the most embarrassing.
    Does the above offend? If you have paid to be here, you can click here to put it in context.

  9. #9
    Quote Originally Posted by 0ddl0t View Post
    I seem to be that person...


    PS: Why is the "midwest" in the eastern half of the continental US?
    Because before the Mexican-American War, etc, expanded the US to the Pacific it was the Western part of the US.

  10. #10
    I have a mixed emotion about FB, and really social media in general. Overall I think it is a great tool that has enabled me to reconnect with a lot of great people, including cousins that are not local. But it has also given me some insight into others that I now know I am just not all that interested in knowing any better. But it also has alienated me from some people I really like.

    A couple of months ago I did the snooze thing. I figured I better step back before I BECOME THE ASSHOLE. This was after I was pretty ruthless about unfollowing people. If you filter in the occasional TDS post amongst the cool pictures of hiking with your grandson, I can take that in stride. But if you post two rants in a row, and all I have to do is click a button to make it stop, how stupid would I be not to? If your intellect does not extend past the right mouse button, and you have to copy and paste your opinion, I do not need to know what you think. Also, if you actually believe that I am going to alter my world view because of a condescending, demeaning, name-calling Facebook post, I do not need to know what you think. Turns out there are a lotta people that I really do not need to know what they think. If I walked up to people at a party and said "I AM SMART, YOU ARE DUMB, THIS LINK SAYS SO, READ IT!!!!!!" I wouldn't get invited to any more parties, yet that is the essence of so many posts from so many people.

    But I think I have found peace with FB. I was really reluctant to delete the account, when you do it scrubs everything, and there really are some fun memories documented there like a diary. But I deleted the app from my phone (also IG and Twitter) and deleted the shortcuts from the desktop. Now every day or two I go take a peek and that works out pretty well. Just last night I had a nice messenger chat with a former coworker and motorcycle friend about a model he is considering that I used to own, all good.

    ETA: I just popped over to FB and ended up unfollowing another friend...
    Last edited by mmc45414; 09-16-2020 at 07:47 AM.

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