The Age of the Keyboard Warrior

Or When a Perfect Stranger Hoped I Would Die

When I was growing up — and this was before the internet, before Facebook, and before anyone had ever heard of cancel culture — differing opinions were considered a good, healthy thing. Debating was encouraged; asserting your position with facts, consideration and basic good manners. No one was name called or shamed for their opinions and you didn’t know who your neighbor was voting for unless they chose to put a sign in their yard or bumper sticker on their car. If you didn’t agree with their candidate choice it was okay because it’s America; everyone is entitled to their opinion and the right to vote as they saw fit, for whatever reasons. You certainly didn’t unfriend them or threaten them. People were adults in every sense of the word.

I have lost friends of many years because of our current keyboard warrior culture. In some cases, it’s because these folks’ political opinions differed with mine. In others, it’s because I wouldn’t unfriend friends whose political opinions differed from theirs. Sure, some of them were “Facebook friends,” meaning we had never met in person but we had shared common interests, common friends and/or belonged to the same group(s). But others were people I had known since my elementary school years, ladies I had traveled with to “celebrate” my divorce, people I had shared some of my life’s most devastating moments with. I knew these people and they knew me . . . and yet a different opinion was enough to sever the cord of friendship. Not on my end, because I have never unfriended anyone over a difference of opinion, but it still stings.

What kind of world have we gotten to where grown adults are behaving in the very way we tell our children not to? Where Person A will convince themselves that Person B is not really their friend because they support/don’t support a particular candidate? Where we will ostracize someone for not thinking exactly as we do?

I had been on Twitter (don’t judge) reading posts about a female’s Me Too posts about a male celebrity. The male in question had disputed her claims, even having others who knew both of them and were around at the time in question saying the female wasn’t being truthful. When I responded, pointing out that the male had receipts that proved that…

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