In case you can't tell from the tiny photo, this guy's profile picture is of him in a firing range, where he is busy practicing. Practicing shooting silhouettes -- that look just like people. In his other photos, military attire. Yikes, not gonna reply to that one.

Thanks to our whitelisting feature, I often click through to learn a bit more about these people who hate me so much, but it's getting to the point where I know what I'm going to find before I even get there. The thing that concerns me is that of all the messages I receive, the most offensive and bigoted ones disproportionately come from people who have listed themselves as Conservative and/or Christian on their profiles. To be clear, I'm absolutely fine with both Conservatism and Christianity and know plenty of wonderful people from both camps -- but it's concerning because these groups have a tendency towards organization and evangelism that their more mild-mannered counterparts generally lack.

In other words, as long as there are assholes like David in the world, happily exercising their rights to free speech and assembly with other assholes, it's going to be a while before bigotry dies in America.

Now, I probably shouldn't be doing this, but sometimes, when I'm not afraid of being shot, I can't help but reply to these people to figure out what they were thinking. I take care never to be offensive, though sometimes tongue in cheek. Often, the simple act of responding is enough to humanize the conversation -- it's really interesting to watch people instantly reel the moment they consider another human being reading their words. But for each person who shows a touch of empathy, it seems there's another person with none.

Sometimes, the messages are so shockingly disturbing that I can't help but go along with the horrible claims they make -- curious to see how the attackers would respond. This has been met with little success.

In any event, I have a few hopes. First and foremost, I hope I am not fired for responding to these people (though whether I'm replying as an employee or as a user of Facebook is an interesting ethical conundrum of its own). Secondly, I hope this doesn't end up on Valleywag (fate, you have just been tempted). But my third and most sincere hope is that, in time, Facebook can help to break down the caustic anonymity that has developed on the Internet over the past ten years or so, which is now so casually abused, especially by stupid young people. No one would treat a stranger like this in person. While the Internet has pushed our communication abilities forwards by leaps and bounds, empathy does seem to be one area in which it has thus far largely failed.


Note: I do want to call out that I often make helpful replies to users critical of the new design, so long as they are polite and constructive. I've actually received a handful of really charming and clever messages that were truly appreciated. Hopefully I will find some time to post those soon.