[481] Chain Of Fools

I want to talk about shame. I want to talk about shame because I’m not sure I have any.

Consider the pissing contest. Any moment can devolve into one. Whether it’s trying to come up with the best names to call your combatant or maybe a feat of strength, speaking to our innate desires to compete can turn anything from polite conversation or contest into a potentially inflamed and ridiculous showing of assess.

But it’s more insidious than that. What happens when you don’t even care to compete, but go at it anyway? What if you’re so bored, jaded, or empty that you go “yeah, I’m down for this” when the aim isn’t even destruction, but just to uncover what the next moment in time will look like? This is the realm of trolling, of course. Doing things “for the lulz.” To me, I see a deeper problem in that it’s not even funny. I might chuckle at a particularly weak comeback, but the whole engagement registers as...helpless.

Perhaps it’s like an addiction. People say you can never know an addict's pain until you’ve been addicted.”Well, why don’t you just stop?” registering as terribly ignorant and small-minded. In online battles of twits, it’s often brought up how terribly insecure the other one is or how much they probably hate themselves. But you have to feel in the first place. You have to be invested as a point of pride.

And maybe it’s right here why it feels so confusing. I do take some kind of pride in showing myself to be more “I don’t care” than someone pretending. I’m not the thug on the street ready to take pride in catching a bullet or getting locked up for the rest of my life. I am considerably dismissive of what much of what people take a lot of pride in in life. Yes, you attorney-esc guy who pretends I’m desperate to harass you, I’m willing to show up in court and reduce you to my perception of our conversation the entire time. We’re idiots trying to out piss each other, only now you thought it wise to bring it to your job.

It’ll only be funny a few weeks later after I’ve paid my fine and reflect at how truly absurd it is to be an animal with the internet.

But let’s talk more about trolling. To me, the heart of trolling is about exposing absurdity. It’s the laziest attempt at a self-righteous condemnation of people’s pride. Unfortunately, it’s morphed into this buzzword for being a pretentious asshole. When you speak truth, absurdly or otherwise, it’s reduced to “bravo, you’re doing internet good” instead of “I should reflect on how stupid and petty I truly am.”

Some of us have a deeper appreciation for this than others. I write, fully awash in my folly. I know and own when I’m depraved and absurd and pointless and yes, when something reaches harassment levels, I’m capable and willing to own up to the difference. What got me a restraining order from my mom was harassment, but then, getting the restraining order was something of a peripheral goal anyway.

In any event, I think what bugs me more than anything is the kind of irony that goes unchecked and unacknowledged by the people who choose to engage with me. This is a distinction I think is wildly important to make. I don’t go looking for fights. People drop things in my lap and I like to be a cautionary tale.

I don’t find the motivation to arbitrarily attack what people have written, as my harassers do me. I don’t desperately cobble together their personal information and float it in personal messages so they know I know who they really are. I don’t make threats to kill or fight people. All of these regularly employed against me when people feel inflamed about my, in their view, shitty writing or self-indulgent blogs.

As well, me merely reacting to assholes on the internet doesn’t betray my self-confidence or sense of worth. This weird glorified stoicism is beyond me. Significantly more times than not do I choose to de-escalate situations, particularly when they’re not online. But, I don’t consider typing stupid things back and forth as dangerous as shoving matches outside a bar. Perhaps that’s an oversight.

Perhaps I just need to read more about and round out my conception of shame. Or maybe I need to find my pride again? Either way, when my boredom combines with people who are full of themselves, things degrade quickly. I wish I could care enough to make myself stop engaging. I wish I thought of myself as “better” than teaching a terrible lesson that the person isn’t capable of receiving in the first place. Sometimes I think I’m a little too much like an old person relying on the relief I feel conceiving of death as eliminating my capacity for concern. I suppose as long as it keeps me in civil and not criminal court it’ll remain a fairly manageable character flaw.