Lurking 2

This week I continued my lurking on the social media sites Facebook and Instagram. The users I “lurked” were LGBTNews on Facebook and lgbttextposts (no caps). I am doing this to understand the social aspect of the LGBT community.

I found that people are much friendlier and more rancid on Facebook than on Instagram when comparing these two sites. People are often curious and ask genuine questions. There was one person who asked another “Off topic what does your profile picture mean?” This person had series of colors in shape of a heart as their profile picture. The person with the profile in question graciously answered, “It is the bisexual flag symbol, it just so happens to be in the shape of a heart.” “Oh, thank you.” The conversation ended pleasantly and all was well. Then I noticed as I scrolled down someone must have left some nasty comments as one of the persons told that individual to &*$7 off. I believe the person who left the nasty comments was blocked.

I also found that on Instagram there were much more people who blatantly were against the lgbt community. They were there to say hurtful things only or to preach, and when I say preach; I mean to invoke Christianity in the sense that being gay is a sin. One person actually wrote, “This is a sin.” Another replied, “Please tell me you’re joking.” Then the conversation ensued from there. I found also on Instagram that the user will post something, then ask the audience a question and most everyone will answer or tag a friend in the comment.

In the Facebook account this did not happen. Most people would agree with the post or not saying “Wow” or things like that or they would have full blown conversations. No one had a conversation on Instagram unless there was hate speech being used, there was preaching as I explained earlier, or of a person defending the lgbt community against the “trollers”.