DNFTT
‘Crazy-making’ just got dirtier. And these days, we dance it up like never before. To me, it’s as if the marauding nature of the online social-packs bolster a person’s bravado enough for them to do a quick hit and run on anyone, for any reason just because they can.
VPL
VPL is short for Very Penneylane. They’re my take on everyday lessons from life. Lessons learnt and others where I missed the boat completely. Life’s long or short, depending on which end of the paddle you draw. Either way, being stuck up a creek without one makes for some interesting observations.
About that Lesson
I wish they didn’t and this is one time when I’d advocate discrimination. Discrimination based on intelligence-gathering. In fact I’ve had a gutful of all the vitriol, the whinging, the finger-pointing and the name-calling lately! It’s driving me nuts!
One of the seamier sides of social networks is the propensity for unoriginal opinion, a follow-cat mentality and an increasing laziness to present knowable information for considered and better understanding of a situation. Instead, pack-speculation is fuelled by ignorance and also some social proselytising that relies on celebrity more than it does on establishing the facts of the matter.
I’m so fed up with it all I’ve nailed a DNFTT sign up on my bridge of reasoning and research until I’m good and ready to take it down. DNFTT, that’s ‘Do Not Feed the Troll’. I’m gonna starve it out from under its bridge and kick it’s sorry backside to the kerb. The thing about trolls is they only hang around when they’re fed, paid attention and responded to or you pet them. My advice is, do none of it tho’ only some of you will listen. Fair enough I suppose.
There’s a restlessness in the air lately. Here in NZ a ship has run aground spilling oil into our seas and there’s a General Election here shortly. It’s a known fact, General Elections bring out the worst in contenders and life gets bloody in the trenches, and dirty too. These two events alone have all the right ingredients for trolls to run amok.
Amidst all the mud-slinging, I’m sure young people wonder, ‘what tha!’ And they don’t want a bar of it. I was talking to a bunch of them recently, they told me, it was quite clear to them someone had fed the troll, paid it a lot of attention, responded to it’s carryings-on and pet its ego.
To them, the solution was quite simple — boot the troll to the kerb and get on with the things that matter. And if what really matters to us means crossing over a bridge despite the imminent threat of danger beneath it, then best to leave your biggest and strongest bro’ till last so he can get a full head of steam up and the troll doesn’t have clue what hit him when the bro’ does. Youthfully sussed.
About that ship, the real question is how. How do we proceed, not just today but in the future? How do we learn from what we’ve done to fix it? And about that Election, the real consideration is what. What will politicians do to retain our ongoing trust in their leadership? In the run up to the Election, the people might recognise they do have a big bro’ behind them, he’s called Vote. And the troll under the bridge, well —he has a name too, indifference. Don’t feed him.
© Gail Penney 2011 :: PREVIOUS BLOG POST: Faking It 101.
