Pushing the Button

I like to like things on Facebook. I also will not hesitate to hit the unlike button.  I am not talking about people I know.  I am talking about professional pages.  You know the pages of actors or music groups or just organizations.  I've been thinking that I should go through all my likes pages and thin them a bit.  There are right now 600 plus pages that I've clicked like on. My son tells me I am somewhat prolific.

Why?

Good question.  Some were pages I liked because they are a particular music group or actor.  Others are organizations, mostly funny, that I struck me as humorous.  Other pages are a result of entering contests while others are stores that I shop or restaurants I frequent , and I am hoping that I will get good coupons from them.  Some pages are friends' pages, and some are pages that friends like.  Some are pages that were linked to other pages. There are also some that I have no idea how I liked them or why.

I don't see all 600 plus on my feed. Some folks are more prolific posters than others, and some will suddenly post dozens of ideas, memes, and other items in a day and then I won't hear from them again for a month.  I do read many of them.  I guess read isn't as accurate as scan them.  And when some of them post foolish gibberish, their time on my feed has been instantly limited.

Take for example a few pages I "unliked" recently.  One was a page called "Almost Nerdy." When they posted the ridiculous story about the "Alien Ship lands on Moon" and posted it as if it were true sparking a debate in the timeline about aliens, they left the realm of nerdom and entered the world of conspiracy theory.  They became that wild haired UFO researcher in so called alien documentaries (one of the reasons I've become very selective about what I watch on the History Channel). Five seconds on the internet and the page owners would have found an extremely accurate debunking of the story. I believe it was listed two or three stories after the original report on Google search. This is not even "almost nerdy."  It is ridiculous.

I also dumped the Charlie Daniels Band page.  I still like some of his music, but when Charlie Daniels decided to post his lengthy rant about how the Apocalypse is nigh, and all the signs are there including the Moslem connections of the POTUS. It was time to let Charlie go off roaming into the wilderness in search of his own golden fiddle.  I don't know how to put this to dear old Charlie, but I don't recall the word Moslem even being mentioned in the Bible and the entire Moslem connection is just wrong and has been debunked so many times that he really needs to find a new place for information. I also seem to recall a passage that no person shall know of the coming of the end times. Maybe it was Mark 13:32 "But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." Have any of these folks actually read the Bible? (Not that I've read the whole thing.)

There was also the strange case of Cheech and Chong page.  I grew up with the humor, although it was often drug related, of Cheech Marin and Tommy Chong.  They were hilarious, and it was pretty clear that drugs made them stupid.  Not really a great "real-life" character trait. Then came their series of claims about the use of pot on the page.  I don't know if Cheech and Chong are actually responsible for the page.  Who knows? But when the page basically announced that driving stoned was not at all dangerous, it was time for it to go.  Stupid humor is far different from stupid advice.  That was stupid.

So "unliking" is not a hard thing to do.  I don't cut off the feeds of people I know, although I may actually limit what I see from them. I really don't need someone who thinks every post requires a cuss word.  It doesn't make you grownup, just limited in your vocabulary.  I do not unfriend people I know because their beliefs are something I disagree with.  I will, however, eliminate the moronic of the corporate pages and cut the spreading of hate from my feed.
Now if you'll excuse me, I should go cull the "liked" pages.  Maybe I can get it trimmed down to, oh say, 575 liked pages.  I would hate to lose my prolific status.  Stop the hate.