Sigh...

You know what's got my goat this morning? (Oh hi, by the way. I know I've been MIA through the holidays. Hope yours were great. Ours were chaotic and fraught with Internet issues, which is why I haven't been around.) Anyway...what's got my goat is the fact that the majority of people on Facebook who feel compelled to launch into angry political rants in their status updates are a) misinformed and b) possessed of exceptionally weak grammar skills. Ever notice that? I'm sure you have. But if you haven't, I apologize in advance, because now it's going to drive you up a wall.

Look, we all have political ideologies that we (for the most part) feel strongly about. Inevitably, some of these ideologies are conflicting. Even within the same FB friend circle, you're going to get wildly varying beliefs. And we all have a right to them, and a right to express them. I have no issue with that, even though sometimes, the things people say regarding those beliefs can annoy me, offend me and even make me question whether that person is someone I even want on my friend list. I have yet to un-friend anyone for expressing an opinion (although I have BEEN unfriended for voicing my opinion on gay marriage. Which is that I think it should be legal. So. Yea.)

I thought about giving some examples of this here, and had even drafted a version of the post wherein I did so. But the thing is, my goal in this post is not to call out any individual or to embarrass anyone. It's to, maybe, hopefully, call your attention to your reactionary ranting and the fact that, in the face of your emotion, you're...missing the point entirely, a lot of the time.

But it does annoy the crap out of me when people take a political stance in a very public forum and are...misinformed and in some cases, downright INCORRECT. Might I suggest that if you're going to get your panties in such a wad that you simply MUST voice your disapproval publicly, that you at least make sure you have your facts straight? Pretty please? And I'm not just talking to the folks I disagree with (who do tend to be the most egregious offenders here, recently). Even if I agree with you, I don't want you putting inaccurate stuff up, since that makes people with my political leanings seem ignorant and uninformed. See?

And finally, regardless of what you're posting about, can we all please agree that grammar on FB is appalling and frankly frightening to someone who used to teach it? I KNOW you all had English teachers who taught you the differences between contractions and possessive pronouns. If you can't remember that lesson, LOOK IT UP AND APPLY IT. You look like an idiot when you disregard rules you learned in elementary school and so help me, if you learned grammar from me and abuse it on FB, you will be corrected. There, I said it.