"Speak only when it improves upon the silence."

- Mahatma Gandhi

You're asking the wrong question. You're asking "am I a pussy when my friends tell me to mix it up over Palestine and I don't want to?" This is a simple answer.

No.

The question you want to ask is "How can I get my friends to leave me alone on 'issue X' without offending them?"

Different question.

Your best move is to come up with a concise answer for yourself as to why you don't want to get involved. If you can write it on a matchbook it's short enough. I might start with "these are my friends on Facebook and I don't want to publicly pick sides in a dispute that is unfortunate, complex, and utterly without winners." You might go with "nothing anyone says is going to accomplish anything other than making everyone angrier, and there's more than enough anger already." You might say "I think the last thing my Feed needs is gasoline for the fire."

Did you know that you can "ignore" someone on Facebook without unfriending them? That is how my sister-in-law and I can avoid fisticuffs.

Don't tell her I said so.

Pabst, there are some things that are simply not worth saying. You may completely and totally disagree with what the person is saying, but you know what? They're just not worth the energy.

To me this happens when I'm facing someone and I realize that no matter what I'm going to say, that person isn't going to change their mind. Then in addition, I do not have the energy, fire, or willingness to stoop to their level in order to agree with them. (Pick one of the three or more.) Sometimes my mental dismissal is "I don't have the time for this." or "I don't care about this enough to argue with you." Sometimes it is "I so completely disagree with you on this subject that I cannot look on you with any respect for having this viewpoint, and in fact arguing this viewpoint with you gives it any sort of creedence and so therefore I refuse to do so."

Keeping your mouth shut can be as much as sign of tiredness or unworthiness as anything else. I think it is a stronger person who knows when not to bother with an argument, than someone who is going to plunge into every single fight just to fight, just to show their bravado and "intelligence" and "my way is above all."

Discussing a viewpoint suggests that that viewpoint has merit. Not all do. As I said in a different thread with 8bit, I was dating a guy who turned out to be batshit. When he told me that equal rights for both sexes would lead to more male sociopathy because men had an innate desire for sex that would cause them to become killers if they didn't get laid, that was an argument I didn't even bother to have. His statement was so wrong on so many levels that in fact I wasn't sure where I would start with it.

Context helps too. If you have had multiple discussions with a person before and you can't get to a point where you either see eye-to-eye or agree to disagree, are you going to keep having arguments/discussions with them about future topics? Why? You know where they are going to go. (That helped me decide to leave that boy's assertion alone too; we had already tried to talk about a few other subjects and been unable to agree.)

Usually I get into Facebook arguments when I am so tired of a given person's blatant stupidity that I must point it out; frequently, too, I am tired of that person in my feed and want them to unfriend me. I know this question isn't about Facebook, but I think that should be a consideration of what it takes to get involved in a verbal brawl.

For the most part, other people's opinions aren't going to hurt you. Racism, sexism, etc - yes, those opinions will hurt you and you will find me stepping up for them pretty much anywhere and yes, especially here (but also in real life; I definitely accused someone of being, and I quote, "a sexist pig" at a 4th of July barbecue this year) - but there are also experiences on which I do not have any input because I recognize I don't know enough, and that's a great time to stay quiet too. Like, I'd (personally) stay out of any discussions about Israel and Palestine. I really don't know enough. That doesn't make me (or you) weak. That means you are capable of acknowledging and differentiating between times you should speak, and times you shouldn't.

I'm going to take a tangential tactic and recommend you view these kinds of arguments through the kind of lens displayed by the Overview Effect. Staying quiet doesn't make you weak, it means you're not willing to engage in the petty. It seems you have already distanced yourself somewhat from arguments like these, but in the broader "pale blue dot" perspective hatemongering and stirring up "debate" is really counterproductive.

After explaining to your friends your reasoning for stopping your debate habits, invite them to do the same. Hopefully they just don't understand why you stopped, and they'll accept an honest reason.

Remember, whether in argumentation or elsewhere, just because you can destroy someone doesn't mean you should.

Silence is a position of restraint.

Restraint requires strength of character.

Strength of character requires ... well ... strength.

single-sentence caps-locked bullshit salads

new favorite saying… mind if I borrow it?

I was raised to believe that men should have a stoic, silent character. That listening is more important that speaking. That when you talk, have something to say that adds to the conversation, moves a talk forward or opens a mind to a new way of looking at things. I'm not saying I'm good at these ideals although I try. Still, I love this outlook at life and it works well for my personality.

I was on Facebook a week, then poisoned my metadata and deleted it. I only do social media that improves my outlook on how the world works.

As I got out of my teens I came to the realization that life is far, far too short to deal with useless bullshit. People who come off as militant turn me off nearly instantly. Persons full of hate and anger have no place in my life. And if someone thinks that I am a pussy for not being loud and angry, that is on them. Their opinion of how I choose to carry myself is not my problem.

"Speak only when it improves upon the silence."

- Mahatma Gandhi

but the nature of "cool" is following your own path for your own reasons and being invulnerable to the doubts and assaults of those around you.

To be a pussy is to knuckle under in the face of adversity. To be a pussy is to not fight battles you can win. But to be a pussy is to fight battles because it is expected of you, because it's the easy way out, because it gives your friends and peers a way to shunt you down the pecking order.

Choose where and how you want to spend your intellectual and emotional energy.

You realized that engaging in arguments about polarizing topics based on insufficient information and selective statistics is not the best use of your time.

When you do speak up on a topic, your frenemies will know that it is something you feel strongly about.

I'm going to take a tangential tactic and recommend you view these kinds of arguments through the kind of lens displayed by the Overview Effect. Staying quiet doesn't make you weak, it means you're not willing to engage in the petty. It seems you have already distanced yourself somewhat from arguments like these, but in the broader "pale blue dot" perspective hatemongering and stirring up "debate" is really counterproductive.

After explaining to your friends your reasoning for stopping your debate habits, invite them to do the same. Hopefully they just don't understand why you stopped, and they'll accept an honest reason.

Remember, whether in argumentation or elsewhere, just because you can destroy someone doesn't mean you should.

Silence is a position of restraint.

Restraint requires strength of character.

Strength of character requires ... well ... strength.

All of these above. You just gotta watch shit go down until actions begin to form that infringe upon your understanding and knowledge of self. It's always awkward to say it because it comes across as cocky, but a lot of people don't really have a sense of self beyond what's placed upon them by the environment.

Haha, all the interesting people in my school are overly tolerant. As a result, we have spent the last 2 days lambasting Israel, less because we care, and more because it's definitely more interesting than the World Cup conversation (which has devolved to a few of the interesting people messaging everyone indiscriminately to tell them that Germany will win).

So far, no one has dared to call us anti-semites. Is it good? No.

I brought out, forthright in that very conversation, that we had a bad habit of using world atrocities to entertain ourselves, and we accepted that statement without any kind of defense or moral concern.

If, one day, someone was sick and tired of it, we would definitely not consider him/her a coward.

Militant feminazis post their hideous blogs to incite anger from both genders on their friends list. Then, they tag my school's Gender "Equality" (HA!) Club to cry misogyny, sexism, homophobia and "fuck you, ugly bastard cyber-bully!" at anyone who tries to tell them to calm down, or at least have some respect.

Israelis share the Israeli Defense Force's facebook page that counts how many rockets are fired on Tel Aviv, and how "Arab cunt sand-niggers should suicide bomb themselves." When my two Syrian and Egyptian friends interject-- both the most incredible people to me who have helped me through the worst of times-- every Israeli on the East Coast shows up to yell anti-Semite and so on.

Thought defriend them and block 'em. Effectively silencing them from spewing their ignorant bullshit all over your Facebook, like some ignorant jizz torrent that cakes everything in it's sticky goop.