I think the title of this post has plenty of merit and insight. Unfortunately, social media is not a world of actual news or opinions formed from careful consideration to the facts. It's all truthiness and "how outraged can we be?" Within the context of politics I can only think of about a handful of people on my FB feed right now who actually share opinions without the use of fake news, memes based on truthiness and extreme far-left and far-right propaganda. There is seldom discussion, and if people do start to debate about it the conversation falls apart because people can't fathom actually doing a little research on history or fact before they go off and reinforce their opinions. They don't want to engage in discussion. Case in point this week. Someone shares a screen shot of statute 5-51-207 Contempt for our desecration of the United States flag; "How many people will repost this on their wall?" with title "And this is what it says, so why is it allowed???". My comment was simply an answer to the question, "why is it allowed?" I summarized the Supreme Court ruling since whoever made this new meme didn't bother looking it up before spreading bullshit for likes. I knew it was a freedom of speech issue before I even looked it up, but I went ahead and tracked down the actual case brief because it's pretty fucking easy to find a controversial case like Texas v Johnson. My FB friend gets a bunch of "likes", a bunch of "shares"...does anyone actually care about the comment I made? Anybody want to talk about it? Maybe just acknowledge it and then say "Oh, well that's interesting, I disagree with the court then because of "x,y,z". Of course not. Of course they don't give a shit about facts. They just want to shout bullshit and validate each other. Feel something. If they're going to post their bullshit for the world to see, and it pops up on my wall, and I have a little time to engage with that person on the subject and they engage back (regardless if we agree or not), then that's fantastic and I'm not going to unfriend because of dissenting viewpoints. I'm over the whole circulating bullshit though, I'm unfriending you and never looking book.