It's fairly typical for me to write something around Thanksgiving where I express gratitude on Facebook, for Facebook. Since joining the network many years ago now, I believe that on the whole Facebook has made a positive impact on my life, and I'm so grateful for the many people it has kept in my life.
But the last two weeks since the election have been brutal. Every single time I look at Facebook, I am confronted by Nazi imagery, shared usually by well-meaning people trying to share their shock and horror about it. And I definitely appreciate that. It's the right thing, to express shock and horror like this. But I can't look at it.
This shock and this horror is something I carry with me daily--and not just because Trump is President-elect. That the escalation in these types of incidents since the election is upsetting to so many is warranted and justified, but I've always seen it there. You may not have heard the stories until now, but they linger around me, always in the shadows, just beyond the frame of the happy picture.
So I'm really trying with Facebook. I want to stay informed, and to not lose connections with so many people I care about. But the constant barrage of imagery that I can't filter out is really hard to deal with.
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