Friend professes agreement but follows opposing extremist accounts on Instagram
A reader’s long‑time friend outwardly supports their politics and joins advocacy events, but a look at her Instagram follows reveals hundreds of opposing extremist accounts, leaving the reader questioning the friendship’s authenticity.
Dear Eric: A close friend of 50 years has always gone out of her way, both in word and deed, to agree with my political views. She has participated enthusiastically in many advocacy events I have promoted. She has even gone so far as to express that her husband feels differently and that his views upset her so much, she might even leave him.
I was thus shocked to see on Instagram that, while she has never made a post, she follows some 1,200 or so people/groups, a small minority of which are friends and the remainder of which are all extremist groups on the other end of the political spectrum from the views she pretends to espouse.