Breakin' Up Is Hard To Do

I've got a little Facebook icon, floating around somewhere, that leads to pretty much nothing.  Well, now it leads to definitely nothing because I quite the Place of Face.

I guess maybe a week ago I got on Facebook to fucker around and I realized that a family friend, who'd been close to my sisters, had had a baby without my even noticing.  I usually check my account on my smartphone, so most of the content I'm exposed to is payed content - minus things I'd had on notifications.  Then there was some minor kerfuffle in a group I was a member of, and everyone lost their shit and didn't seem able to recover, so I quietly walked away. 

I'd been pretty disconnected from most of the people in my life for a while now, for various reasons.  I've always had a habit of floating in and out of the fray of life.  But around a week ago I realized that the disconnect was much deeper than, say, a bout of depression that takes me out of the game.  Or not keeping in touch as much as I once did after moving. After I saw that I missed the birth of a friend's third child, I made it a point to check in on my friends.  I know that our FB profiles are inaccurate snap shots of our lives, like the one acceptable selfie after taking one hundred bathroom mirror photos; it's carefully angled and filtered to present an image that isn't 100% real, but in it's own strange way it is 100% honest.  The internet has afforded us our own platforms for espousing our ideologies and values on a relatively captive audience.  After all, we're friends, so we'll all spew out things we'd never say to someone's face, and you'll hit "like". Because we're friends. 

I congratulated my friend, and said how lucky I thought she was to have three beautiful children who she loved and who loved her in return.  I'll only ever have Stinkbug, even though I'd always thought I'd have more.  I'm happy for her, and a little envious that she'll get to kiss baby toes for another year, and hear "mama" for the first time again.  If I'd known that these sentiments would set off a diatribe about how hard her life is and how I'll never understand or be as strong as she is, I'd have just moved on with my life as if I'd never found out about the baby.

I moved on down the friends list.  Another rant about deadbeats on welfare who are leeching off the system and living off our tax dollars...from someone I know for a fact receives food stamps.  Really?  I see a lot of those types of rants on my newsfeed, and - to paraphrase - I'll defend your right to your opinions, no matter how disparate they are from my own.  But the fact that easily 90% the people putting these recycled right-wing fundamentalist memes out there are on, or have been on, some kind of assistance, completely boggles my mind.

I feel like that last sentence is grammatically wrong somehow.  I'm sick, so I get a pass.

Caitlyn Jenner was why I eventually just hit the "deactivate" button. 

I have an aunt who is MtF.  We're not crazy-super-close.  I'm not "crazy-super-close" to anyone.  But she's a bitchin' burrito smothered in awesome sauce.  She's a Republican, which is a total mind-fuck, but she's articulate and I can understand her rationale - even if I disagree.  I'd throw a pie for that lady, not because she's my aunt, or because of equal rights, or anything else other than she's cool beans and a human being.  And she has nothing to do with my leaving Facebook. 

I have a friend.  We're not crazy-super-close.  I'm not "crazy-super-close" to anyone.  But she's another bitchin' burrito smothered in awesome sauce, and she is often wounded by how shitty the world is.  She's beautiful, and I sort of want to steal her hair.  She's in love with a fictional character, because real people are shitty.  She is MtF, she is very young, and she is very vulnerable.  We have mutual friends, at least one of whom felt the need to weigh in on Caitlyn Jenner.  Post after post about how we shouldn't call "it" Caitlyn.  About perversion, about sin, about going against god.  "Friends" who know how she struggles, can call Caitlyn a "freak" or a "monster," and still smile into her face. 

I'll defend anyone's right to their opinion, even if I disagree with my entire soul.  But you can't say, I dunno,

"Women with brown eyes are genetically predisposed to murdering babies."

and still want to be friends with my brown-eyed self.  You know?  I feel like we're in "I'm-not-racist-because-I-have-one-black-friend-at-work" territory at that point.

I could unfriend a bunch of people, easy peasy.  Buuuuut...that'd be like 80% of my 60+ friends.  I'm sick, so don't ask me to math.  Let's just say it wouldn't be worth keeping a Facebook.  It's not worth it, to find out that people I care about are horrible, so I called the whole thing a wash, and deactivated.  I still IG, because cats and Funko.  I'm a lame ass.  Some of my real-life friends follow my account, and vice versa.  We don't interact much, except to like each others' pictures.  I like people much better at a little more than arm's length.

Completely unrelated P.S.:  THIS WHOLE WEEK OF STEVEN UNIVERSE GUYS!  ZOMG!!!!!!