Troll Farms, Hate Accounts, & Social Media
delete your hate accounts
My day job currently involves selling real estate which yesterday allowed again my path to cross with out-of-state buyers from Illinois. This husband and wife couple from the Chicagoland area are in the process of retiring and have begun the search for what many call their, “forever home”. Like many they are searching in Tennessee because of the low cost of living and great home values still here (outside Memphis and Nashville of course).
I’ve sold many homes to families here in Tennessee who have relocated from Illinois, Michigan, New York State, and California the past several years and I wouldn’t be telling the truth if I said I didn’t feel some concern for the style of politics they might be bringing into our right leaning rural traditional family oriented state. But this concern is often far lessened if not entirely removed after the first showing or two because rarely does politics get brought up during a showing.
And when it has been brought up, it has always been by the buyer of course b/c I’d never discuss politics, naturally.
Anyway like I was saying, I just got done hanging out w/ some Chicagoians where our paths crossed by mutual interests in real estate here in the West TN area and am reaffirmed in my belief that the political divide is grossly amplified by media (both shows and social media platforms) for monetary gain.
We’ve heard it said, “bad news sells,” and this couldn’t be more evident than now.
In my experience, which I imagine is like most others, most people despite having differing political leanings desire and do get along quite well with people in-person.
Maybe we save our vitriol for the inter-webs and then spew it out from behind the sanctuary of our anonymous hate account profiles, which is more cowardice than courage in my opinion. But to be honest, I’m guilty of it myself. I’ve done it many times over the years since I first jumped online in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. But not anymore. I use one account profile and that’s my real name for all platforms.
As a 40-something inching closer to my mid 40’s which is basically 50 in my mind I’m thinking and planning more with the blessing of hindsight I suppose and want my actions to align with what I say I believe, if for nothing else for my kids’ sake. Few things can be worse than ones kids seeing you as a fraud and hypocrite, and I can’t stand that thought.
“Genuine and sincere” is a phrase that comes to mind when I think about how I want out kids to remember me after I’m gone and know this can’t be achieved if I’m not striving to live intentionally inline with what I say I believe is right and wrong which means aligning online manners with offline manners. Ouch, right?
(Side note to my Christian brothers and sisters: If you call yourself a Christian, you can’t have a hate-account my friend. We know Jesus wouldn’t have a hate-account. While we can easily maintain our anonymity online, should those who call themselves Christians exercise anonymity online just to spew vitriol? We know the answer. Of course not. Of course NOT! This is such spiritual milk stuff, just basic and elementary level.)
I digress, back to the point at hand.
It is extremely rare for us in the real world free from the keyboard to speak to others in gas-lighting ways ready to go all out scorched earth. The past few years I’ve really begun practicing how I portray myself in the online world as synonymously as possible with who I am in the real world.
Let’s not be fake.
Let’s not be pseudo.
Let’s be real.
Let’s seek to treat others as we would want to be treated, especially online. This is hard! How can this even be possible?
I think this involves not responding to the trolls when we share truthful things. Shun vitriol. Shun it hard! Shun it like a door slamming in someone’s face kind of hard. Put the truth out there if that’s your purpose for being active online, then shut up. Let it fall where it may. Responding to the trolls is taking their bait. While it sounds harsh to “shun hard”, what I mean is merely not responding to vitriolic comments. Identify them for what they are, shallow attempts at gas-lighting you into a meaningless and endless debate.
This thing about internet trolls reminds me of an article I saw titled,
“19 out of 20 Christian FB Pages Run By Russian Troll Farms” or something like that.
from a similar or the same article, don’t actually remember this is about the same thing:
…“5,000 Facebook pages with majority-US audiences were being run from counties like Macedonia and Kosovo. This includes the largest Christian American page on Facebook (20 times larger than its closest competitor), the largest African-American page on Facebook, the second-largest Native-American page, and the fifth-largest women’s page. All told, 10 of the top 15 African American pages, all 15 of the top Christian pages, and four of the top 12 Native American pages were being run by troll farms whose behavior and tactics often echoed those of the Russian disinformation organization, the Internet Research Agency.” …
Now I’m not on Facebook anymore, but you can find me on Gab.com (a self-described “free-speech alternative” to FB) which ironically in some ways reminds me of FB when FB first launched in 2006-ish when I joined it in grad school in how it has that kind of Wild West feel the internet had itself way back when in a pre-politician account and pre-politically correct speech and censorship internet world.
While there is a lot of ‘hate speech’ on Gab, it is not censoring like Twitter, Reddit, Facebook and others so you naturally get the mixed bag of far right and left sycophants yelling their mantras. This Wild West kind of internet space does take me back a little bit though to the good ‘ol pre-censorship days, kind of like when restaurants had a side for smokers and a different one for non-smokers. Some things about those says were better in that they were freer.
Can anyone remember the internet and social media before politicians got on board? I do. It was fun, right! Remember?! And in many ways it was much more carefree and less polarizing. Maybe we should ban all politicians on social media platforms, eh? I guarantee society would be better for it and many politicians who seem to really enjoy an audience might actually get a little work done by building bridges across the isle. (I know. Let’s not hold our breath.)
Let’s go back to 1995 when ABC News Anchors like Bryant Gumble, Matt Lower, and Katie Couric didn’t even know what the internet was:
Good times, huh?
Things change quickly folks! In ’95 the baby boomers had no idea what the internet really was, then they jumped on it and broke it! Good grief! Who wants to join a, “ban the politicians on social media” campaign?
Hit me up. Maybe it’ll actually turn into a movement.
Well anyway, not to go down that rabbit hole. Have a great weekend and uh, go delete that hate account you might be using as a step towards being consistent as a person between the real and online worlds.