It’s not whether you win or lose the meme war, it’s how you play the game. Right now, the other team is playing harder.

Olympic viewers—myself included—were upset when an Italian woman boxer, Angela Carini, withdrew from a match against Algeria’s Imane Khelif, after less than a minute. 

In the past, Khelif had failed sex tests and been precluded from boxing with women. The Olympics were happy to take Khelif’s word for it.

On Facebook, I posted a picture of the two boxers, with Carini walking off disappointed as Khelif tries to console her, with the caption “I Am A Man.”

It was flagged by the Facebook moderators. Sarcasm is not a high crime and misdemeanor. And it was hagged by a few friends, all progressive women, who said my insistence that only women compete in women’s sports amounted to “hate”.

One woman even threatened to sic naval intelligence on me. Flagged and hagged. This is life for the next 50 years if you’re not willing to walk away from fake friendships.

I went to two different high schools, one college, and have worked many different jobs in my 40 years. 

That’s mostly who my 1,000 Facebook friends consist of—somebodies that I used to know. 

Of those 1,000 people, I haven’t heard the voices of 900 of them in a decade. Are we really friends?

I’m not really a keep-in-touch kind of guy. I’m out of sight, out of mind. The buzz on Twitter/X is more my speed.

On Twitter, you make connections based on how you think, and how someone else thinks. 

It’s not based on who sat where in 10th-grade chemistry class. If Twitter is a river, Facebook is a museum. It houses the Ghost of Friendships Past.

Some of those friendships are meant to stay in the past. You don’t need to “catch up” with people you love, because you never let them go.

The boxing dustup made me realize that this is not just a time for choosing. It’s a time of bright lines and scare tactics.

If you have a friend who shouts her abortion, why is she your friend? If you have a friend who thinks you are a bigot, don’t write it off. Take action. Tighten your circle. 

Your fake friends have drawn their line, and it’s a bright line. And what have you done since you met them? You lived on their side of the line. 

Everything you say and don’t say around them is based on what they’ll tolerate. Not what you believe. Faking it ain’t making it. So stop.

What to do? Do what our friends do. Make the personal political. Have standards for the people you associate yourself with. Take note of their attitude toward themselves, their family, other people, life itself. Watch how they handle disappointment and setbacks. 

When they break up with a man, is he now a gaslighter and abuser, the worst man ever? 

When they lose a job, does that mean the boss was sexist? This tells you their character. 

In most cases, you know exactly who your friends are and what they’re capable of. You only keep them around because their foolishness hasn’t affected you. Yet. But it will.

Inclusion is not a fruit of the spirit. Inclusion is closer to a problem than a solution. Unpopular opinion: We don’t need to find ways to include everybody we’ve ever met in our lives. People are in our lives for seasons, and before Facebook, it stayed that way.

Discernment is a better tool. Who is in, who is out, and who do you need in your life? These are questions we wrestle with daily. 

Life and love are not a “set it and forget it” enterprise. We must be adjusting the settings constantly.

Our friends on the Left believe the personal is political. We pride ourselves on taking nothing personally. Between them, who will fight harder? Who is more likely to influence the other person? Who is more likely to shape our world?

Basically what I’m asking is: Why aren’t you as strident as people who shout their abortions?

James David Dickson is host of the Enjoyer Podcast. Follow him on X @downi75.