The Controversial Survey

[vovat]

I got this from pixielust:

[01] Do you have the guts to answer these questions and re-post as The Controversial Survey?
I don't see what my intestines have to do with it.

[02] Would you do meth if it was legalized?
No way. That stuff will really mess you up, from what I've heard.

[03] Abortion: for or against it?
I think it's sometimes the most viable option, which is why I'm pro-choice. It's better if it never has to come to that, of course, but the world does not need more unwanted children.

[04] Do you think the world would fail with a female president?
Of course not. Other countries have had female chief executives, and they didn't go down the tubes because the leader spent the treasury on makeup. The United States is kind of behind the times in this respect. That said, the woman who's currently closest to being President is Palin, and I think the world probably WOULD fail with her at the helm of the nation.

[05] Do you believe in the death penalty?
I waffle on this. I'm not totally opposed to it, but I think it's usually unnecessary. And it's too easy to make a mistake.

[06] Do you wish marijuana would be legalized already?
Yeah, I think it should be.

[07] Are you for or against premarital sex?
Like the abortion question, this one is rather oddly phrased. I have no objection to premarital sex, as long as it's safe. But if you want to wait until marriage, that's okay with me.

[08] Do you believe in God?
No.

[09] Do you think same sex marriage should be legalized?
Definitely.

[10] Do you think it's wrong that so many Hispanics are illegally moving to the USA?
No, I don't really care. I can see that it would be preferable for these people to enter the country legally, but it doesn't particularly concern me.

[11] A twelve year old girl has a baby, should she keep it?
I don't think so.

[12] Should the alcohol age be lowered to eighteen?
Maybe.

[13] Should the war in Iraq be called off?
Yes.

[14] Assisted suicide is illegal: do you agree?
No, I think it should be legal.

[15] Do you believe in spanking your children?
I'm generally not in favor of corporal punishment, but I don't think it's necessarily wrong if done sparingly.

[16] Would you burn an American flag for a million dollars?
Maybe. What are the other stipulations? If I had to do it in front of the American Legion, I'd probably be too scared. I have no objections to flag-burning, though, aside from the fact that it's wasteful.

[17] Who do you think would make a better president? McCain or Obama?
Obama.

[18] Are you afraid others will judge you from reading some of your answers?
No, although I know people will disagree with some of them.


By the way, you know one thing I don't know that I'll ever understand? LJ users removing other people from their friends lists with no explanation. It's happened to me a few times, and I'm probably oversensitive about it. But I'm terrified of rejection, and that's part of why I usually won't add anyone to MY friends list unless they add me first, or we've had some prior back-and-forth commenting. If you have a problem with someone, why can't you just TELL them? And if it's a matter of not wanting people you don't really know to see certain posts (which I can totally understand), isn't that why custom groups were invented?

Comments

[annamatic.livejournal.com]

It's funny, I agree with you on just about every single answer! On #8, my answer would be "I think so", and #15, I'd say "No", but everything else is pretty much spot on, heh.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

It's weird, because very soon after answering this survey, bethje sent me a link to an article about how corporal punishment is a bad idea. It made the point that an adult can get in legal trouble for hitting another adult, but not for hitting someone smaller and weaker than them. I think that's a good point.

[bec-87rb.livejournal.com]

I agree, defriending in a huff is uncivilized and hurtful.

Best de-friending EVER:

Did you ever follow missravenx's journal? She was a TMBG fan, and I have been reading her LJ for years when she started weeding out friends, weeding out friends, weeding, weeding, and finally closed out her LJ completely.

I got weeded out in the second round of defriendings because she was quite sensitive to people gently pointing out when she wasn't making sense? At the point where I got cut out, her boyfriend had just gotten the courts to take their baby into custody while she underwent psychiatric evaluation. Something about him fleeing the house when she declared that if he Truly Loved Her he would let her perform a home vasectomy on him, and had started shopping online for supplies. Whoa.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I've seen people do the weeding thing, and I never quite understood it. It often seems like unnecessary paranoia. But then, I guess unnecessary paranoia is only to be expected from someone who wants to perform a home vasectomy. That's not to say that I don't post things I don't want everyone on the Internet to read, but if I really thought I could trust certain people on my friends list and not others with certain information, I'd either use a custom filter or just relay the information in some other way. And to me, allowing comments suggests you're okay with people disagreeing with your post. I mean, if you didn't want their input, you could just disable comments, right?

I haven't had too many people de-friend me, but I think all those who have were ones who friended me more or less randomly. Easy come, easy go, I suppose.

Abortion shouldn't even be around...

[(Anonymous)]

... if people don't want kids, they shouldn't get freaky with no protection.

Re: Abortion shouldn't even be around...

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I think that's generally true, but no protection is 100% effective.

[slfcllednowhere.livejournal.com]

Eh, if people never comment or anything and I never see anything I feel like I can comment on in theirs then I defriend them. It doesn't mean I hate them or anything, just that we haven't really clicked. Or if they never post. I wouldn't take it personally.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I guess it's usually not personal, especially when people de-friend a lot of people at once, but I still have to wonder if there was something I did wrong. And I'm always scared that people find my journal boring, and I have to wonder if that has anything to do with it. Really, I don't think I need to "click" with someone in order to read their journal and have them read mine, as long as we're both writing about things that interest the other person.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

I tend to friend people based on whether or not I want to read THEIR posts rather than caring much whether they read mine, so I don't understand defriending as some kind of emotional thing-- more like you just don't want their posts cluttering up your friends page anymore. Makes sense if you're really busy or something and don't have time to wade through it all, and not to be taken too personally.

But even when I'm really busy, I enjoy your posts too much to defriend you!

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Makes sense if you're really busy or something and don't have time to wade through it all, and not to be taken too personally.

Yeah, I guess that makes sense.

But even when I'm really busy, I enjoy your posts too much to defriend you!

Thanks! I hope other people feel the same way. {g}

[1womp.livejournal.com]

I agree with rockinlibrarian on the subject of defriending. Maybe this would all be easier if we were, instead of "friends," all called "associates." Then we could associate with blogs we like to read, disassociate ourselves from those we don't, or join associations of like-minded folks.

And I did defri...er, I mean DISASSOCIATE myself from someone when his blog - which would appear on my Friends Page - began to fill with too much really filthy stuff. I still read his stuff from time to time, but there are teachers and schoolkids who check out my site, including my blogs. I just can't afford to have that kind of @#%&$ representing me as one of my friends. Is that two-faced of me? Sure. Censorship? Of course...but only in that I am choosing to not directly post something which may offend a significant portion of my audience. It's not like I'm forcing him to stop saying "@#$%&" or anything. I have to watch my "bottom line," you know? And I did explain all of this to him...eventually. At first, I was too chicken that I'd either hurt his feelings (even foul-mouthed @#$&%ers have feelings) or be the subject of one of his swear-filled rants. We're cool now, though. And his name? Senator John McCain (TRUE STORY! Only the names have been changed to protect the sort-of innocent).

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't really like the "friends" label either. Some of the people on my friends list are actual friends, but there are others I don't even know very well. "Associates" would probably be more appropriate, but maybe the person in charge of naming such things would find it too cold-sounding. I don't know.

I still read his stuff from time to time, but there are teachers and schoolkids who check out my site, including my blogs. I just can't afford to have that kind of @#%&$ representing me as one of my friends.

Well, I hope my journal isn't so bad in that respect. I think most of my posts ARE pretty family-friendly, but when they're not, I don't give any warning or anything.

[obsessical.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I agree about the f-page cluttering aspect of de-friending. Only once have I ever de-friended someone because I didn't like them. Wait...twice. And the first person I had recently friended and didn't really know at all, so I don't think they were offended. And the second person i had just gotten so fed up with posting 80 whiny posts a day (NOT UNDER A CUT) about how their life was the TOTALLY WORST EVER.

I'm actually debating whether or not to cut somebody RIGHT NOW who posts a crazy lot about things I don't care about. We're not really close, but we have talked on IM a few times, and she's not entirely emotionally stable, so I'm a bit afraid that she'll flip out on me if I de-friend her. But all her entries are either completely insane or random twittery post things that i don't get at all. And there's like, at least 10 on every page of my flist. But I feel like, it's the internet, you know? I don't have to be everybody's friend. Either I like you, and we get along, and we have a lot in common and I enjoy reading your posts...or I don't. If somebody unfriends you and you're upset by it, you should talk to them about it, because maybe they think you're just not close, and you could get closer? I don't know. I think I'm gonna cut the crazy lady. (And pray she has enough buds that she doesn't notice...)

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Either I like you, and we get along, and we have a lot in common and I enjoy reading your posts...or I don't.

But you can enjoy someone's posts without really getting along with them personally, and vice versa, right?

If somebody unfriends you and you're upset by it, you should talk to them about it, because maybe they think you're just not close, and you could get closer?

Well, I haven't been very close to most of the people who've cut me anyway. I guess I just don't figure I HAVE to be close to someone to read what they have to say. Maybe that's a difference in how we perceive our journals.

[obsessical.livejournal.com]

Well just because they cut you doesn't mean you have to cut them, if you still enjoy their posts. You might still be able to comment as well.

And I normally don't find the posts of people I don't like very interesting, unless it's on a mean, guilty "reading-about-your-life-is-hilarious" sort of way, and then I feel like a bad person :(

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Well just because they cut you doesn't mean you have to cut them, if you still enjoy their posts.

That's true. I guess I just figure I'm reciprocating by cutting them, or something like that.

[colbyucb.livejournal.com]

In the past (like young teenage years, where I was a lot more neurotic and hormonal than I am now), I've removed people without telling them because I thought they didn't like me >.> Yeah it's weird since if they didn't, wouldn't they remove me first? Also my problems with confrontation which were especially bad at that age usually prevented me from approaching them about it.

As for doing it these days, it's usually when someone's journal hasn't been updated forever, and they haven't posted anything like "I'm going to be without internet/out of town/whatever for 6 months." And in that case, it's generally people I've never commented on/had comment on my journal anyway, or they added me for seemingly no reason, I added them back just because, but then their journal went dead with little discussion between us. People that I consider LJ friends are pretty much stuck on my flist though, whether they want to be or not heh.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

See, even though I get annoyed when people don't update, I don't see how it does any harm to leave them on the list.

[colbyucb.livejournal.com]

Maybe this is a girly thing then, because I notice the drive in female LJers more than guys to "clean up" their flist and remove inactive posters and such. I could be terribly wrong though, heh.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think everyone who's removed me from their list has been female, and it's more often girls who do the list clean-ups. So is there a connection between that and the second X chromosome? I really don't know.