Troll Feeder or Punching Bag?

For the purpose of the post, this is the definition of troll:

“someone who posts inflammatory,[2] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response[3] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.” (source: wikipedia)

Ah, arguing on the internet: the amateur sport of my generation. Never before have we been able to launch flimsy rationales and insulting invectives across the globe in real-time. What progress we enjoy.

I try to avoid the arguing, I swear that I do. I’ve realized, as most normal people do, that fighting against someone looking for a battle only gives them validation and energy. Their purpose isn’t to examine their viewpoint, present their argument, and discuss it until a common understanding can be reached. The troll is already absolutely certain of their correctness, and their only aim is to provoke you into losing your temper. You see a lot of this in politically themed conversations.

And I’m all for letting a troll’s argument die due to lack of attention, but there is a point at which I wonder if I’m too passive. My mother warned me all throughout my childhood to “never be a punching bag” and to stand up for myself, so trying to back away from a conflict is  difficult. And if the troll is insulting and slandering people and ideals that I believe in, am I failing to support my ideals by staying silent?At what point does a strategic and tactical approach drift into cowardice? Then again, trying to refute their insulting claims is an exercise in futility.

And of course, my pride is involved in the whole mess as well. I don’t like even the implication of being on the wrong side of something. It’s also pride that insists that people need to know what my opinion is  on any given topic.

 

Legal Equality

I don’t want to bore you with a laborious explanation of a legal concept, so I will keep this one very short: everybody is treated equally when it come to the law. What we work towards as a society is providing equal protection and benefit from the law to each and every person.  I’m going to assume all of you, my wonderful readers, are totally on-board with this.

But here’s the catch, the rub, the fly in the ointment: any law that protects you will protect the people you detest as well. It has to protect them, or it would be useless as a law. It’s interesting to watch what happens when the law rules in favour of something unpopular. Suddenly, a small group of people who normally champion rights and equality and due process become vocal advocates for making an exception to the law. I have two examples.

There’s a piece of property in town that has been owned by a developer for 30 years, but has been left undeveloped due to opposition from the local residents. The battle was back in front of city council again, and as a part of the fight, the developer’s lawyer made a Freedom of Information act request to see all of the public record correspondence between one of the most vocal opposing residents and city council. I understand why this upset people, and I agree that it might make average citizens less inclined to communicate with their councillor, but that’s unfortunately beside the point. If we demand that our elected officials are as open and transparent as possible, and that they make all official communication available as a part of the public record, then we have to accept that everyone gets to see those records, even people we disagree with.

The second example is a little bit steamier. Strippers! Specifically, a lady who was supposed to do a zombie-themed burlesque as a part of Shock Stock, a horror convention. She was going to do her strip-tease in a local bar, but the by-law officers descended and made it clear that there would be arrests and fines a’plenty if she dared to do her act. That is because, in London Ontario, you can only do a strip-tease act in a venue designated as an adult entertainment venue. Since the bar was not one of the few authorized strip clubs, the act was forbidden. And that’s fine: they went by the book, and enforced the existing bylaw. The trouble is, the law wasn’t applied equally a few weeks after that when the fire fighters stripped down to their skivvies to raise money for cancer research. Was this all-male beefcake revue held in a designated adult entertainment venue? Nope. And yet, they were allowed to perform the show with no threat of fine or incarceration.

I’m not making an ethical or moral judgement on either of these situations, because that’s not the issue. My personal standards shouldn’t be the guideline on when a law is applicable. We should absolutely review and change any law that does not serve the public good, but that has to happen through the established process. And until the due diligence has been completed, the law has to be enforced fairly and equally.

 

Grief

You may remember this post, where I wondered if anyone would tell me if my father had passed on. Two weeks ago I received my answer in the form of a phone call from my mother. My father passed away on July 11, 2011, a few days after his 66th birthday.

Grief is one of those human experiences that we study obsessively through our stories and art, as we try to understand it and prepare for it when it touches our own lives. My fear had been that I would feel no sadness or loss from his passing, and because of that, I would be revealed as some kind of defective, emotionally dysfunctional human monster. I’m still afraid of not being normal, of people finding out that I’m broken, and yes, I know this is an irrational fear.

I wasn’t numb or unaffected. I had not seen my father for almost 20 years, and the last few years of our family life together were ugly for everyone involved, but the news of his death was a punch to my gut. A sinking sense of finality. I felt the urge to lash out and rage in response to the news, but some presence of mind kept me from that. Instead, I finished the phone call and  decided to go out for a run to process my feelings.

I set out along one of my normal routes, with no set time frame or distance in mind. As I made my way down the street, I looked up into the sky at the television broadcast tower that loomed in the distance. I grew up in the shadow of that tower, with our backyard backing onto the field that the tower stands in. The tower marks the location of my first memories, a real-life map pin that shows where my life began.

I plotted out a new route, one that took me into my old neighborhood and past my childhood home. As I ran towards the old house, I went through the scattered snapshot memories that I have of my childhood. I rummaged through those few memories for nice moments involving my dad.

I jogged down my old street and I slowed down to a walk as I passed in front of the old house. I looked at the front yard where my dad, my brother and I played ball and tag. The yard where my dad taught me how to throw a ball and swing a bat. Through the front window, I saw the living room where we had watched the space shuttle Columbia launch in 1982, and my dad remarking afterwards “hey, that’s the first time you’ve ever whistled.” And I remembered the one conversation in the basement when he told me how sad he was that I never had a chance to meet his father.  “He was a great guy. You would have liked him”.

Goodbye dad.