It took
me about 30 years of life to finally start to see people as something more than
the flesh and bone that they walked around it.
In my
defense, please remember that I am an introvert and so I tend to avoid interacting
with people like an introvert avoids interacting with people.
There
isn’t any particular event that I recall as an educating factor, it was just a
threshold amount of life, I think. Finally enough experience in the world to “see
the light” as they say. It just sort of evolved. But what the hell am I talking
about? Basically I attributed prejudicial characteristics to people based on
visual cues.
Huh?
Let’s
give examples!
When I
was a teenager, I really liked to think of myself as enlightened and open
minded. However, some things I could not mentally tolerate. I was put off by
behaviors and characteristics of others, such as the implicit intimidation I
would feel in the presence of people with tattoos (keep in mind they were neither
as popular nor as artistic in my day as they are now).
I did
not like to see people with their mouths just hanging open (fish mouth = stupid
person).
People
who wore religious icons of any sort irritated me (religion = closed minded, ignorant,
and uneducated). I really had no interest in being around or interacting with
them (naively believing that if I left THEM alone, they would leave ME alone).
Really really really
tall people freaked me out since they violated my made-up rules of what defines
a human (tall = freak of nature and not to be trusted since they could spaz out
for no reason at any time… and they were bigger than me).
Fat people made me think
they had a poor work ethic. I genuinely thought they were lazy people since
they had so much extra time to lie around eating rather than riding bikes,
playing, working, and so on (fat = lazy and part of me envied them because I
wasn’t allowed to do the same).
Other miscellaneous
things affected my judgment of people such as the accents they spoke with,
facial hair, too long or too short hair, people who drank alcohol, people who
used the wrong (or mispronounced) words (“new-que-ler” for nuclear, seriously?!),
the type of job a person had, mentally unstable people (the “crazies”), whether
a person had a new vs. old car, whether they did their shopping at retail
stores or thrift stores, homeless people, attractiveness vs. unattractiveness,
age (old people are scary… almost as scary as really really really tall people),
smokers, and so on.
Of course my
judgments were exponentially more negative whenever I might meet a person who
combined multiple elements. Imagine my view of a really really really tall,
fat, religious, smoker wearing thrift clothes!
Basically, at some
point it occurred to me that (for the most part) these were things that had no direct
effect on me whatsoever. So why care about that? The person behind that superficial
cue or behavior has a rich history of life experiences, beliefs, ideas, humor,
pain, struggle, hopes, goals, losses. JUST LIKE ME. My fortune relative to them
is merely that I rarely have to see myself. I just have to live in this
skin-wrapped package of slowly dying meat.
Ok, admittedly, some
exceptions still exist, such as the religious people who judge and treat me a
certain way while trying to “convert” me or force me to live by their rules and
standards directly or by pressuring lawmakers (they can righteously fuck the
fuck off please); people under the influence of alcohol bug me because I get to
see smart people instantly turned into stupid people (LITERALLY). Smokers still
bug me because they force me to “smoke” with them… in fact the ONLY reason I
don’t want to see marijuana legalized is because I don’t want to have to smell
that shit everywhere. But these exceptions are relatively rare (and hopefully
becoming more rare in most cases).
So it is with
fish-mouthed disbelief that I see the internet trolls who trash-talk other
people for the way they act, look, feel, or believe. This isn’t a local (USA)
phenomenon. Other countries gleefully like to “insult” Americans for being fat
or not being able to speak multiple languages or for behaving “like Americans”
in other countries.
To some extent there
is benefit to critical analysis, but nowhere near a benefit that would justify the
amount of energy expended on the trash-talking that is taking place in the
world.
When so shallowly insulted
by others, as with, “You’re as ugly as a thing that is so ugly it doesn’t have
a name except the name you have been given by your parents which is shared by
others who aren’t as ugly so that wouldn’t be a good name for how ugly you are!”*
Isn’t the best response simply to say as blasé as possible, something like: “So?”
*FYI: Typically the trolls
use insults that are either parroted mindlessly from something they heard
someone else say, or, when they create their own, tend to be as eloquent as my
example here.
What can the troll
say to that? They will scramble around in their uncluttered head for their
sharpest repartee which will likely be something like, “Well… I don’t like
having to look at you!” And again, the elegantly simple response of “So?” makes
the point well enough again. The effort needed to say a single word compared
with the buffoon’s attempt to assemble as many of the 4-6 letter words they
know into the semi-coherent vomiting sound they call “speech” is unmatched.
I used to feel that
simply ignoring the trolls was the best way to go. But that can escalate the
trolls’ tirades because they feed off of others’ reactions. To give them
nothing makes them hungry. So instead, I feel that the best way to get rid of
them is to take the “nutrition” out of one’s reaction. They can’t get anything
out of “So?” except frustration. Let them expend the limits of their intellect
spinning their vile and wearing their stubby fingers away on their
booger-coated keyboards. The effort of responding with a single word is
negligible and you come away looking and sounding classy in comparison.
One last point,
though. There are some other types of trolls that I wonder about. These are the
“death trolls” whose insults stray into threats of violence (rape, torture,
death). I have no idea how often such threats are actually carried out compared
with the rates of similar stupid but unthreatened rapes, tortures, and
killings. I don’t know if “So?” is a good enough response. But I wonder? It is emasculating
to make a threat of violence only to have the object of your threat appear genuinely
unfazed.
Ultimately I would prefer
a world where what you see is what you get. The assholes of life would be
obvious and we could avoid them. We would stop making them and they would
eventually die out. But really the skinny troll fat-shaming another based on looks
is the only way we have to reveal who should be the most ashamed. Skinny doesn’t
make you a good (or a bad) person; attractive doesn’t make you a good (or a
bad) person; rich doesn’t make you a good (or a bad) person; fat doesn’t make you
a bad (or a good) person; ugly doesn’t make you a bad (or a good) person; poor doesn’t
make you a bad (or a good) person. My truth is, it’s what you do, how you treat
others, and what you value/devalue that makes you good or bad.
Are you a bad
person?
