I breaks my heart when I happen on flame wars. People I personally know to be intelligent and civil folks sometimes cultivate their assholiness online because it makes for a good show. There was time when public executions were considered wholesome entertainment. That time has passed, and hopefully so will this one. Still, most folks can still be drawn into a descending spiral of tit for tat vitriol; even I can feel the urge to retaliate when someone who disagrees with me responds with lame ad hominem snark. Various middle school I know-you-are-but-what-am-I comebacks always pop into my head, but just like so much of what our hearts place in front of us, I know that such impulses lead to mostly to heartache.
There was a time when social contracts were only enforced within kinship groups and any affront by someone from an out group was met with tit for tat retribution making dangerous physical violence. Thankfully, despite the noisy cynics, modern civilizations have realized we need a rule of law, that assault needs to be curbed, regardless however much our hearts crave it. Most of us comply most of the time, sadly though, mostly out of fear punishment.
It seems ironic that within these most modern inventions of our modern civilization: this digital universe, we should have tragically reverted to our most base impulses. We obviously still cannot be trusted to do the right thing without credible sanctions, which have yet to be worked out for this space. All the blaming of the robber barons of silicon valley and expectations that they stop it or that we can somehow fix it by breaking them up, misses the culpability of each of our own hearts of darkness. We need a new and stronger social contract, and there needs to be consequences for violating it.
We’re not quite done, but my take back in 2016 was that the effect of trumpism was either going to be to vaccinate us against authoritarianism, or create our own Rwanda. It’s looking like with the intrusion of the deep state, especially local election administrations, the , and Rwanda being doged.either going to Hopefully the Troll King’s reign will have triggered some sort of collective immune response, and rather than continuing to reward such nasty trolls with fame, wealth, and power, his downfall will become an object lesson in the wages of the sin of snark. We do have laws of defamation and libel, we do have limits on free speech when it comes to public safety, and with the virtual zeitgeist pushing the up against the limits of safety, there needs to be a reckoning. As much as I am a turn the other cheek sort of person, who is in fact here advocating for exactly that sort of response to personal offences, the depth of the danger and damage to our social contracts have been so unprecedented and severe, I think we need to make an example of perpetrators of this period of unkind excess. So while I preach to give the trolls the cold shoulder, swallowing our anger and ignoring those who trespass against us, I am also uncharacteristically on board with the Fuck-That! school of response to the leaders of this attempted coup. It is just a bridge too far.
HOLLY DAYS 