I, like many of you I’m sure, am on Facebook. I was actually an early Facebooker from back when you had to log on with an actual college email address proving your alumni-cred. Any of you remember that? It used to be much harder to join Facebook. Yes, it was actually hard to join if you didn’t use an alumni email address as your primary email address. I mostly joined because my employer provides a wide range of services to nonprofits, many being schools. We did some early application integration with Facebook, and it was helpful for many of us to register.

I did have my famous ex-sort-of-girlfriend slash stalker slash confessional meth user slash wildly inappropriate hussy incident, and was turned off good ol’ FB for some time. Then I connected with some old friends, some genuinely good people, and things started looking up.

Now I am a somewhat casual user. I probably average a couple checks a day as long as my iPhone is handy. I rarely open the site in an actual browser. But I get the status updates, the real meat of the experience for me. One of my favorites is what I see as a fan of NPR. With a very small number of exceptions, I actually do not usually “fan” anything or anyone, but since I was doing some design work for an NPR project, and Facebook integration was of peripheral interest, I went ahead. Now I am treated to a variety of teaser headlines and article stubs, usually several times a day.

Then there are the inevitable comments – NPR has a lot of fans. Very vocal fans. And not always as intellectually impressive as they seem to think. I actually would have hoped that fans of NPR would be a little better with the grammar and spelling than fans of, say, Bubba Ho Tep. Not so.

Today I saw an amusing article. It was about court case over the gay marriage ban in California. At the time I saw the post, it was only about fifteen minutes old and there were already several dozen comments. There were also about 50 people who’d ticked that “Like” button giving the article a thumbs up. The funny thing to me is that the article did not take a stance on the issue. It was about problems with the case on both sides. Props and criticisms from both sides of the argument. So, I wasn’t sure if they “liked” the fact that the ban is being challenged in court or if they “liked” the fact that the ban was being defended in court. Very interesting, indeed.

Maybe this is how we can all come together and deal with our differences. I mean, I’m a total northerner and even though I loved visiting my brother’s vacation house in Raleigh with the family, and can’t wait to go again and again, I’m not exactly ready to start pricing NC Health Insurance. It’s a different culture and I’m not sure I’m  ready or willing to change the rules…my rules.

Still, if all the people with different ideas about a particular topic can come together and “like” the fact that the topic is under discussion, in a more or less neutral journalistic process…maybe there’s hope. Maybe we can see that the vinegar and vitriol of the shear op-ed outlets like Fox News and the like are not helping anybody, whether or not you agree with their politics. Let’s learn the lesson here. We “like” the fact that issues are being discussed and we don’t need to “hate” everybody who disagrees with our individual, personal views and belief systems.

Right?