#guncontrolnow #notallMuslims #Can'tstumptheTrump #Brexit #Notinmyname #BlackLivesMatter #I'mWithHer #FeelTheBern #BlueLivesMatter #StopIslam #LoveWins #ShoutYourAbortion

Anyone else hashtagged out yet?

I know I certainly was.

I think the first time I really noticed political action on Facebook was after the Ferguson, Missouri protests. People were furiously typing out long and passionate diatribes about the evils of "White Privilege," the horrors of police brutality, and the seeming injustice of the death of teenager Michael Brown.

I think what bothered me most was the vitriol and self-righteousness of many of the posts. As if somehow, if you weren't on their side, you were just as evil as the cop who pulled the trigger.

But the protests continued, and the popular hashtag #HandsUpDon'tShoot arose as a symbol of racist police brutality in the U.S.

The hashtag was based off of eyewitness accounts that Michael Brown held his hands up in surrender before the officer shot him, but these accounts were later learned to be completely incredible. Brown had fled a convenience store after stealing and assaulting the owner and was later shot after an altercation with the police officer. The Department of Justice reported that "the shots fired by [officer] Wilson...were in self-defense and thus were not objectively unreasonable under the fourth amendment".

Yet the social media crusade continued apace, even though the story they were telling had little to do with the facts on the ground.

I remember another instance of this after the Paris attacks in ISIS. Instead of simply expressing their condolences, I saw post after post of people shaming others in caring about the attacks in Paris, but not those in Baghdad or Beirut. This was apparently a sign of our collective "White Privilege," and how we only care about fellow white human beings instead of fellow brown ones.

I'd just like to add that none of these posts came from my numerous Facebook friends from Lebanon or Syria, they only came from my white American-born friends.

Another popular thing to do after ISIS attacks was for people to post this verse from the Qur'an: "whoever kills a soul except for a soul or for corruption [done] in the land-it is if he had slain mankind entirely" (5:32). Obviously, this was meant to deflect any opinion that certain elements of Islam caused the terrorists to do what they did.

Except this verse is taken completely out of context. This was a command that God gave to the "Children of Israel" (the Jews), and not to the Muslims.

Funny how no one ever quotes the rest of the passage, which reads, "And our messengers had certainly come to them [the Jews] with clear proofs. Then indeed many of them, [even] after that, throughout the land, were transgressors. Indeed, the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and his messenger and strive upon earth [to cause] corruption is none but that they be killed or crucified or that their hands or feet be cut off from opposite sides or that they be exiled from the land" (5:32-33).

I could go on with examples of videos and articles about slut-shaming, fat-shaming, cultural appropriation, why Donald Trump is literally like Hitler, or why Bernie Sanders is the Messiah, but I think I made my point.

Many of you have probably noticed by now that I've really only criticized liberal political positions. There's an obvious reason for this: I'm conservative. But I think there is a deeper reason that I'd like to address.

We live in a society where the political and cultural Zeitgeist is overwhelmingly liberal. The majority of our political comedians, whether it be Jon Stewart, John Oliver, or Samantha Bee, are liberal. The majority of our celebrities are liberal. Whether it's Bob Costas' impromptu rant about gun control in the middle of a sports game, or Jesse Williams' speech about cultural appropriation at the BET awards, left-leaning politics has a way of seeping into every aspect of our lives.

I find it interesting how my generation is so quick to find the bias in Fox News, but posts Buzzfeed and Vox videos like they're completely objective and unbiased (I know this might come as a surprise to some of you, but they're not).

So, what is my solution to this, you ask? Should simply everyone become conservative? Or should we just stop posting political opinions all together?

Well, no, because I don't think that solves the problem. The problem isn't that conservatives are just inherently smarter than liberals, and that you never see stupid political memes from a conservative point of view on Facebook. The problem is that when people want to take up political positions to sound cool or part of the "in group", or want to engage in a kind of political Pharisaism just to feel good about themselves and castigate all who disagree as evil or racist, they will most often take liberal positions.

I mean, for example, I saw so many people on social media who were bewailing Britain's exit from the EU. Why? Did you even know what Brexit was three months ago? Or are you just going along with it because John Oliver made some joke about it last week? After all, he's British, so he must know what he's talking about. Right?

Or how about the claim that Islam is a religion of peace? Alright, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But How many of you who say that have actually read the Qur'an? The hadiths? The early biographies of Muhammad or any histories of the Islamic empire? From what I've seen, most people haven't, as most defenses of Islam are taken spectacularly out of context.

Eventually my frustration with the way people were sharing their opinions online caused me to write my own articles. I didn't simply want to do the exact same thing everyone else was doing, only give it a conservative spin, however. I try as hard as I can to use credible sources, do research, and approach things with a healthy skepticism, to prove my points. I try to give those who disagree with me the benefit of the doubt. So far it's worked wonderfully. I've been able to talk about stories that a lot of people in my generation don't know about (the wave of sexual assaults hitting Europe by migrants, for example ) and I've been able to spark great conversations with people I disagree with over important issues.

So, maybe there is a place for sharing an opinion on social media. But, like everything else, it all depends on how you do it.