Sometimes I see something an online friend of mine has tweeted or blogged, something I don’t personally agree with. It could be an innocuous thing like “Man, I really love pickles!” And I think to myself, grrrr, I hate pickles! Why am I friends with this person? Then I find myself on the verge of unfollowing/deleting their RSS feed from my Reader/casting them into the online unknown whence they came only to remember, oh wait, I don’t have to agree with everything my friends say. Pickles are a stupid example; sometimes it’s more important (seemingly) like a business practice or technological prediction.

Before the last presidential election, I had a friend who refused to vote. “There are some things that both candidates say that I don’t like,” he said. Well, hell, I said, there won’t ever be a candidate who believes exactly what you believe. We’re all incredibly complicated; it’s not realistic to expect all your stances to be represented by one candidate. “Then I won’t vote,” he said, “because I won’t compromise my beliefs by choosing the lesser of two evils.”

(Have you ever noticed that people who don’t have sound, logical arguments often fall back on platitudes and cliches? “The enemy of my enemy is my friend;” “fences make good neighbors.” ARGH! Do your own thinking!)

It’s NOT choosing the lesser of two evils, I said. It’s realizing that you can’t be president. You would be an awful president. You also cannot have your clone be president. Those are the rules! Man up.

I tell this long and rambling story because, just like you can’t vote for your clone to be president, you can’t befriend your clones. I mean, you can, but then you’re one of those creepy celebrities who use bottle service at bars. Normal, well-rounded people should surround themselves with lots of dissenting voices and diverse people, right?

So it’s all right, person I’m following on Twitter who likes pickles! Rest easy, blogger who can’t stand British comedy. I started following you for a reason that was much more important than our small differences, and until the scales tip and that reason is no longer enough, I’ll let all these little things go.

Photo CC freeparking on Flickr.