Online Discourse

Is it worth engaging with a troll?

No.

If only life were that simple.

This is a new venture for me as you may have deduced. I’m enjoying figuring out my voice and doing my best to gain an audience outside of my friends and family. In order to expand my reach I made a decision to pay to boost my last post on Facebook and Instagram. Well, it sorta worked.

I noticed on Saturday night that traffic on my Facebook page was up and then the comments started rolling in. Wow, what a cross section of the country. People who agreed or disagreed seemingly based on the title or the picture and not the content of the post. Memes. Lots of memes. And of course, hatred and racism.

I’ll admit, I engaged a bit. I am an old school comment warrior from back in the day and since other things became more important in my life, I had sort of avoided those needless confrontations recently. But this was my post and hey, anything to increase engagement with the page and my newsletter, right? It quickly reminded me of one of the big reasons I stopped participating in little flame wars a few years ago. It’s fucking useless.

As an educator, I am a firm believer that discourse can enlighten us all and with enough common courtesy and respect, we can find areas of agreement and a way forward toward solving society’s problems. It’s kinda the whole ethos of our country. I have also lived this in my life. I have had over my lifetime many friends of all political stripes and those have been great friendships. I genuinely enjoy contentious conversation especially if I feel that it’s being done in good faith and mutual respect. See where I’m going here?

The object of the internet troll is to anger and upset the target. I get that. I also know from being the oldest of three brothers that irritating people is a common form of human interaction. I still like to tease people. The difference, however, is there is an existing relationship with the people I tease and annoy. All parties involved understand that. There are times when teasing gets out of hand and I have inadvertently hurt someone’s feelings or had my feelings hurt as a result. But because it is within the bounds of friends and family and relationships formed over time, you can make amends, heal, and move forward. Trolling is very different from this.

I have no relationship with the trolls who hijacked my comment thread. I would find it difficult to be friends with people like that, and not because of differing political viewpoints. I can disagree and find common ground with most anyone about all sorts of disagreements—things like, tax policy, foreign policy, decisions of war and peace, domestic priorities and spending, etc. This is why we have public discourse, right?

Before you start with the whole “Well, actually,” I fully recognize that historically there have been issues that have torn this country apart, but that kinda makes my point. Issues of human rights and dignity typically are the disagreements that have cleaved the public sector in two. I’m talking about slavery, civil rights and Jim Crow, immigration, LGBTQIA+, and other issues in this vein. These kinds of rifts are different than disagreeing about a property tax abatement. This is where our discourse has been polluted. And this is where compromise is impossible.

“We can disagree and still love each other unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist.”

― Robert Jones Jr. (this is often falsely attributed to James Baldwin)

I would love to tell you that the internet is the cause of our increasingly horrible treatment of each other. Unfortunately, the internet is only an accelerant. If you wanted to be homophobic or racist or a bigot, it used to be you had to do it in public to someone’s face. Even then, the Klan wore masks to avoid the public scrutiny and repercussions for their vile beliefs. Not anymore. It’s easy to be an internet tough guy with your circle of jerk-off buddies telling you how you “owned the libs!!!!!11!!”

So I can’t help but reiterate, what’s the point? The troll will never be convinced and I’ll never be satisfied that I got through because there is no “getting through.” They don’t want to engage, they want to feel powerful about their shitty lives. Bullying is the mood of the era right now and it’s coming right on down from the Bully in Chief. I wish I could feel sad for them, honestly. Then I look around at what the bullies are doing to our country and all I feel is angry. Angry and resolved to not sit by. I hope you’ll join me.