So, I’m sure you all heard about the horrific attack that took place in South London on Wednesday. It was truly, truly disturbing and almost unbelievable. These are sick times we live in. For a man to be hacked to death in the middle of the street for nothing other than being a British soldier is bad enough. But then for the attackers to be able to make a video about it and wait around 20 minutes for the police to turn up is beyond belief. Shudder.
As to be expected, Facebook became the place to vent. It’s only natural I guess. My issue is that you get FRANKLY IDIOTIC people talking about complete and utter bollocks. Seriously. The amount of posts I saw stating they were up for going to march with the EDL. The amount I saw talking about p*ki cunts (laughable really since the attackers were actually black, of Nigerian descent but hey, what do I know?). I cleansed my friends list by quite a few. Most of them I’m not bothered about, but there was one that got me really angry.
A friend, or so I thought, who I’ve known for oooooh, I dunno. Maybe six years? She was the girlfriend of The Ex’s best friend so we spent a lot of time together, even went on holiday together and split up with our respective partners within a matter of weeks of each other. We don’t see each other all the time, but she’s definitely someone I would have counted as someone I could go to if I needed to. In other words, a friend. She’d shared an update from a page called ‘ban islam.’ Bad enough in itself. This status was basically saying not to use any ‘muslim’ businesses and listed some, for example, taxi services, corner shops etc etc. It said we shouldn’t be so dumb as to give them our money. We should STARVE THEM OUT. In caps, just like that.
I asked if she was being serious. After all, for one, those businesses are not inherently muslim. It’s not like you can say that because a guy who runs a business looks like he could be from a predominantly muslim country and therefore we should boycott it and I said so. I gave her a chance. She replied, saying that to be fair, the status did say muslims (therefore my argument was invalid) and not everyone might agree. But she did. And that’s why she shared it.
This coming from someone who was happy enough to sit in a house, eating food, socialising with me and my MUSLIM ex. Fuck. That. Shit. I was angry but I just replied with ‘fair enough.’ She was deleted and blocked. Her contact details are gone from my phone. Drastic? I don’t think so.
I’ve had enough of seeing racist, xenophobic, homophobic – everythingphobic – on my Facebook. I don’t need to see that kind of negativity. And I don’t want to. What makes me angry is that if I were to ask any of these people anything about politics or foreign policy, they wouldn’t be able to say fuck all. Interestingly enough, it was the military friends I have, some of whom have had multiple tours in Afghanistan and Iraq who were the ones speaking the most sense. One said that the kind of behaviour and rhetoric he was seeing on his Facebook from so called family and friends was not the reason he put his life on the line. He didn’t make the choice to protect and serve morons who can barely tell the difference between Europe and the Middle East.
I definitely wont be mourning the ‘friendships’ I’ve ended.