Be forewarned, this blog entry is a more of a rant than anything else.
As some of you may know, Stacey Robinsmith dot com has a bigger, but younger brother, The Left Coast dot ca. I started my first blog, Stacey Robinsmith dot com, way back in October of 2004. It was all about provincial politics. It was a fun time. Also a time for learning.
Back then The Tyee was a relatively new online newspaper-like publication as well. During the 2005 provincial election campaign they created a feature called The Hook. The purpose of The Hook was to bring together bloggers who were writing about election related stuff. They had their top ten bloggers and I was one of them. At the time I was, or my blog was, getting 1000 to 3000 hits a day. It was a cool time.
At some point, I don’t remember exactly when, I decided that I wanted my blog to be about the issues and not so much about me. So I changed the name to The Left Coast. At the time I failed to “migrate” my existing content over to the new domain. I suppose I lost something like 400 blog entries. C’est la vie.
Anyway, I still have The Left Coast and it is still about politics. Metro, provincial, federal and some American stuff.
With the growth of Facebook I decided that I needed to get onboard this juggernaut or get run over by it. So I created a Facebook page called “I’m a fan of The Left Coast.” And I sent invites out to my hundreds of new found friends.
Of the several hundred people I sent the invite to, 41 people responded by making the effort to click the “Like” button. Forty-one people. Wow.
That got me to wondering. So I went into my Facebook page and took a look. I saw that I have made the effort to click on 93 pages that my friends have asked me to support. The way I saw it, what effort did it take to click “Like”? What did it hurt to give a little click to show support for someone’s cause?
I mean I have clicked “Like” to support gay marriage and gay students’ right to a harassment free school life. I have clicked “Like” to show support for the fact that your kid is the cutest kid in her grade three class and to end cuts to the education system. I clicked to support restoring the arts funding and I even see that I have clicked to “Like” a group about belly button lint doing a better job than Stephen Harper. I have clicked to show support for getting rid of plastic water bottles and for making free clean water a right for all people. I have clicked to help my friends get elected, and I have clicked to get people defeated. I have clicked and clicked and clicked.
When a friend asks me to support their cause, I give them the click. Sure I sometimes edit my Facebook settings so I never have to see if their kid actually was considered the cutest kid in their grade three class or not, but I show my support.
If you have made it this far into my diatribe, perhaps you could make the effort to give my political blog a little Facebook love. Go ahead and do it even if you change your settings so that you never have to hear from my blog again. It sure would make my day to see a bunch of “Likes” on my Facebook page.