As the presidential campaign heats up, so do social-media spats.
Children and parents block each other on Twitter. Lifelong friends sever ties on Facebook. Spouses avoid each other on social media.
“My wife was close to blocking me on Facebook because she is the complete opposite of me when it comes to politics, so she would get upset when I posted something she didn’t like,” said Jeff Lawrence of Colorado Springs.
“I figured it was easier to create a new friends list so that when I posted political stuff only they could see it, rather than having my wife block or unfriend me,” he said.
Election-season clashes between friends and relatives are as old as presidential campaigns. But social-media platforms have raised the stakes. New media technology allows opponents to bicker in cyberspace as well as in person — or to go completely silent.
The latest phenomenon is for politically divided relatives and friends to block, mute or unfriend each other over the political differences that can become a permanent part of an Internet profile.
“These arguments stay on the Web; in fact, they remain on your page for all to see,” said Jan Rezab, chief executive of SocialBakers.com, a social-media analytics provider. “This can be a wound that refuses to heal — a constant, thorny reminder of the argument. The 2012 elections are the most polarizing in decades. They are plagued with partisan rhetoric and personal attacks. Tensions would be high even without Facebook or Twitter.”
After Myra Morrison’s son posted what she called “horrible pictures” of Obama, she blocked him from her Facebook page because she didn’t want the photographs appearing on her Facebook timeline.
Similarly, Will Brugger of Erie un-friended his father because of his comments supporting Republican U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin’s volatile comments about “legitimate rape” last month.
“It made me sick,” Brugger wrote. “I told him we could be friends again after the election.”
For Fort Morgan Times reporter Veronica Ivey, the real problem lies less in party affiliation than with tone.
“I find myself about once a week on a soap box, not really discussing politics, but about how fed up I am with … these people with extreme political opinions,” Ivey wrote. “Somehow, now that this is on Facebook or other public social media forums, (it’s as if) there can be no other line of thinking.”
Denver photographer Tim Hunt, who uses his Facebook page for business as well as socializing, says he avoids posting his strongest political views because he doesn’t want to alienate friends and potential clients.
“In a live conversation, I would love to agree or argue points and counterpoints, but because of the medium Facebook uses, just about anything I say can be taken out of context,” Hunt wrote.
He removed one pro-Obama friend’s posts from his news feed and deleted his conservative uncle’s posts debating the veracity of Obama’s birth certificate.
“There’s more information available now than there was 40 years ago, in terms of the presidential election, and that’s changed the tempo, not necessarily for the good,” Hunt wrote.
Hiding behind keyboards
Anthony DeRosa, Reuters’ social- media editor, observed that the relative civility of dinner-table political debate disintegrates when the same people post their thoughts online.
“There’s the syndrome of the ‘Internet tough guy’ that comes out in some people where they become someone they’re not in real life when they’re behind the safety of their keyboards,” he said.
Alice Madden, former Colorado House majority leader who currently serves as the Wirth Chair in Sustainable Development at the University of Colorado Denver’s School of Public Affairs, believes the online nastiness is at least partly the fault of political television shows that can be rancorous and disingenuous.
“People feel they have cover if they’re just reposting something that a friend sent them or they saw somewhere online,” Madden said. “They can say, ‘I’m just sharing it. I didn’t originate this.’ It shoves thoughtful political debate into a corner.”
Jason Wasserburger, who works in the Wyoming governor’s office, blocked a friend he called “one of those Wyoming Democrats” after a relentless barrage of e-mailed links and Facebook posts.
“It seems like once every 10 minutes, he posts some Democratic rhetoric. It feels like spam. At the same time, you have to keep some of those people around to have diverse points of view, or you’ll lose sight of what’s going on,” Wasserburger said.
Luke Lane, a student at the University of Northern Colorado, lost a potential date because of his Facebook politics. He’s a server at a Greeley restaurant, and a young woman slipped him her phone number. She looked up his Facebook page.
“I called her, and she said, ‘You’re clearly a Democrat, and I’m a Republican, and we shouldn’t talk anymore,'” Lane said. “Since then, I’ve refrained from posting anything political, and I went back and unliked all the pro-Obama, very Democratic pages I’d liked on Facebook, just till after the election’s over.”
Lynne Lawler, who calls herself a “progressive/liberal/left-leaning/2nd Amendment-supporting Democrat,” says she is dismayed by the polarizing posts she sees in social media.
“What I’m seeing with this election is a nastiness on a personal level, much more dramatically than I’ve seen in the past,” Lawler wrote. “They’re not putting their views out for discussion. They’re saying, ‘This is the way it is, and you should agree because I’m right.’ “
Instead, Lawler, like many others who value their relationships as well as their right to vote, elects to keep silent for the most part — “although sometimes I have to grit my teeth not to say anything,” she conceded.
“I can’t wait until the election is over,” said Pueblo resident Ian John, “so that Facebook can go back to nothing but pictures of kittens and video – game/ comic- book jokes.”
Claire Martin: 303-954-1477, cmartin@denverpost.com or twitter.com/byclairemartin