Lower Personal Political Voices Online to a Dull And Thoughtful Roar

By CHRISTINA NICHOLAS

Regardless of who you voted for in the 2012 presidential election, we can all agree that it is time to rejoice because, now that the election is over, we are done with those dreadfully obnoxious political ads.

The overbearing political advertisements may have been put to rest, but the same cannot be said for people expressing their opinions on social networking sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. This brings up the question of whether the same rule that applies to the dinner table should be applied to social networking sites: no political talk.

When the presidential debates aired, both my Twitter and Facebook newsfeeds exploded with political opinions. Some, including a couple of my own tweets, were more civil statements on what political stances we agreed with or disagreed with. Others were unnecessarily malicious attacks made against the candidates.

One of the common, and very moronic, things that was repeatedly said was “I’m moving to Canada if the candidate I dislike wins.” It really irked me to read posts like these because they were simply un-American. What makes democracy great is that it allows us, the people, to choose our leader. This will inevitably bring about some controversy, but, at the end of the day, we are still one nation, and we all want the best for America.

So shame on you if you said you’d hypothetically desert our country if your candidate did not win. If you expect this country to support you regardless of who the president is, you better be willing to do the same for it.

What I am getting at here is that I think it is completely appropriate to discuss politics on social networking sites if it is done so civilly.

Social networking sites were designed to discuss and express opinions, and in this day and age, they are some of the top forms of communication. So, it only makes sense to use them to acknowledge an event as large as picking the next leader of our country.

However, these networks were not intended as an outlet for people to go off on offensive rants or to make insulting remarks.

Yes, we do have the freedom of speech in this country so if you wanted to verbally rip a candidate to shreds, you have the right to, but this doesn’t mean you should.

If you are old enough to vote, you are old enough to practice disagreement and debate respectfully.