Everyone has an opinion when it comes to politics.
Even if you say you don't, you do, especially in the election year, where the new president could have an enormous effect on the state of the country. Usually, the two main candidates will bring very different cards to the table, and the nation is once again split in the two-party system our first president George Washington warned us against. Despite the fact that it's unlikely that any two people will have the same exact beliefs on absolute everything, the country formed between two major parties anyway. The problem with a two-party system is that when there are two sides, there is almost always a war, and in this day and age, the war is being held on social media.
There's no need to drag your soapbox to the center of town and yell to anyone who can hear you about your opinions. There's no need to personally find everyone you know and tell them exactly what your feelings are about the upcoming election. There's no need to text or email everyone you know and tell them how you feel about the debate. Most of us wouldn't do any of these things; very few people feel the need to make sure that everyone they have ever spoken to in their entire lives is aware about their political stances, and yet we have come to the point in our society where everyone knows this information about each other - social media is an impersonal soap box, a mass text sent to nobody in particular, yet it reaches everyone. Most people can figure out their relatives political views just by going onto their Facebook page. Everyone and their mother feels the need to go on and write paragraphs about Hillary Clinton's emails and Donald Trump's wall, and we become engrossed in fights and debates all from the safety of the internet. There are a ton of arguments sprouting between family members all because of social media. Cousins who haven't seen each other in years now feel the need to school each other on foreign policy. Many of these arguments wouldn't have come up in real life if not for social media. Why is this?
Of course, we all have the relatives that bring up politics at family gatherings, but social media has amplified these opinions and fights to a point where they cannot be ignored. Social media makes everything you write impersonal. Writing a random Facebook post to no one and picking a fight with your uncle at a birthday party are two very different things, yet the results are the same. However, birthday parties end, social media will always be there. The internet could have brought the very next stage in politics, where everyone becomes a political expert, via their very reliable source, Facebook.
