Saturday, December 17, 2011
Stupid question #infinity +1 - compartmentalizing.
This will be brief. I just got done this morning posting a comment on another site where the commenter had called me a stupid bitch as part of his brilliant strategy to overwhelm me with feelings of self-hatred. Mwahahahaha! My response was basically to call him a name in return, then dismiss his post as not worthy of any further effort. This person goes by the name John Galt, so that should tell you everything you need to know, and he essentially just spews Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, right-wing talking points. All of us commenters had gotten to the point of just ignoring him for the troll he is.
My question is this: If you detest someone based on their ethics and morals -- well, actually their lack of ethics and morals -- does anything they say about you ever bother you? I guess the whole thing got me thinking about how little I care (exactly zero) what someone like that thinks of me or calls me, but if one of my regular readers and commenters would call me the same thing, and mean it, I'd be crushed.
But, on further reflection I'm realizing that if very many of us feel this way it does NOT bode well for the future of political discourse in this country. I'm not about to start caring what any far-right-reactionary type thinks, and I've gotten to the point that once I can identify a person as such I completely dismiss their babbling. It's a conundrum.
Actually, the longer I think about this, the more I realize there are vast swaths of society whose opinions I ignore - religious fundamentalists, climate-change deniers, rabid misogynists and homophobes, to name a few.
I realize that even among people I admire, there will be areas where we will disagree on issues, and those are the people whose opinions I will carefully weigh and consider and argue with, but I would never dismiss them as irrelevant or stupid.
How about you? Do you have a point where you basically just refuse to subject yourself to hearing any more inane stupidity from someone and write them off altogether?
Well, this was longer than I thought it would be.
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I've high school and college classmates who I won't unfriend on FB, regardless of how weird they are. However these are people I've known a long time. And I haven't noticed homophobes or misogynist comments yet, and one is a Baptist Seminary head (retired).
ReplyDeleteHowever in your laundry list you left out holocaust deniers and ultra-rabid atheist (they are perhaps worse than fundamentalist).
Weirdness, obnoxiousness, peskiness - whatever - those things I can tolerate forever. It's more if someone displays a meanness of spirit and smallness and intentional cruelty that will make me decide that their ideas don't merit any serious discussion or consideration.
ReplyDeleteActually, I left out several groups from my laundry list and holocaust deniers would be on there.
Ultra-rabid anything, even feminists, atheists, etc., can be tiring after awhile, but I tend to cut the people who have always been and continue to be on the receiving end of the cruelty I mentioned above a lot more slack since they seem to be acting in self-defense, and I can understand their rage.
I've run across Mr.Galt on comment threads before. Bugs Bunny said it best: "What a maroon."
ReplyDeleteYour point is well made, ignoring people with opposing opinions is part of the current mess. The internet is so big that it's easy to limit one's self to like-minded ideas. I have a buddy who gets his news from Fox, and gets testy when people contradict him. What to do? I figure let him stew. He's a smart guy. Eventually he'll wake up. Eventually. Then I think, where do I get my news and ideas from? Not Fox, for sure. Yahoo, Huffpost, MotherJones, Arstechnica, and occasionally WSJ or NYT. Am I guilty of limiting my exposure to other ideas? It's tough.
Hi John
ReplyDeleteI've often wondered if there isn't some colony of rightwing bats that all run around posting at various blogs under the name John Galt. They (or he) always spout the same tired FOX talking points and never, ever address the actual issue or point at hand. If you invalidate their arguments, they just switch to another talking point - typical trolling.
I am definitely guilty of reading pretty much only sites that aren't going to raise my blood pressure enough to give me a stroke. I don't mind a well-reasoned argument, but I do absolutely refuse to let a vocal minority ruin my day for me. I read enough of it second-hand at places like Kos and Wonkette and all the lefty blogs I follow, but at least I also get to read the outraged, snarky replies to whatever idiocy they're informing us of, and realize I'm not alone.
I'm also guilty of not letting rightwingers post their drivel in my comments sections - I figure if they have that much to say they can get their own damn blog and spout off there. Hmmm - apparently I'm a fascist progressive liberal.
What I've found from repeated attempts to debate logically, on the basis of verifiable facts, with right-wing Netizens, is that it comes down to two or three attitude traits that make it a futile and very unsatisfying exercise.
ReplyDeleteFirst, there's the notion their belief is just as good as my facts. People with that attitude really seem to believe that because they have a right to their own beliefs, they have, ipso facto, a right to their own facts. Or at least they might as well have that right.
Second, there's the notion might makes right. Many of them are bullies or fans of pols who are bullies. Not just authoritarian, but actual bullies. So, they believe, if they hang tough, even ruthless and get nasty, they should win and get their way.
Third, and in keeping with their anything-to-win attitude, they don't recognize or abide by any discipline in debating or discussing some point of disagreement. Come back at them with facts and sources, and as you say, they do a talking-points dump, they twist something you said, they change the subject, they throw in ad-hominem attacks — anything but admit, "OK, you got me on this one."
So yes, it does wear a person down and make attempting discourse seem futile.
What I found really disconcerting was when, a few months ago, I was discussing this with Mr. Bitch. Now, this is a man who wouldn't read a political blog if his and my life both depended on it, but he had actually heard from some MSM source that it's a common tactic for certain groups of rightwing conservatives to haunt liberal blogs and websites just to leave junky, trolling comments with no purpose but to stir things up and piss people off. I figured if even he had heard about it, it must be much more widespread than I was aware of. At least I've been reading these blogs long enough now to usually recognize fairly quickly when someone is just spewing venom. They may believe it, they may not, but either way I won't respond unless I think I can really, really piss them off. Surprisingly, quite a few of them seem to be misogynists, too! 8^O
ReplyDeleteDepending on what a conservative commenter has to say, his tone, etc., I will go a certain distance debating. But when it gets down to the stuff I mentioned, I switch to benign neglect. They usually go away, some permanently, one for varying lengths of time.
ReplyDelete