Our generation of millennials has brought a new way of dealing with politics—and really, any news—in a new way. Social media is a fairly new outlet. It was once used as a way to maintain a connection between friends and families; but it is now considered one of the main sources of news for many Americans. It is an outlet for quick, easy to access, and fairly personalized news. But some of the tough things that come with it is its lack of validation and the biases within the news sources— it is taking away the relaxing charm that social media once had. There’s also something pretty awful that comes with sharing with the world your news online, and that’s trolling.
Urban Dictionary defines the term “trolling” as “unleashing one or more cynical or sarcastic remarks on an innocent bystander, because it’s the Internet, and hey, you can.” And that is exactly what happened to me.
I shared a video on Facebook produced by College Humor, a YouTube channel known for showing hot topics in a satirical way, just one week before the election. The video was basically a funny way to compare the two major presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
It was on my page for a couple of hours, and then this guy started to comment.
It started out as a civil debate between opinions and little facts. I thought that after I had responded and said my final piece it would be over (I had actually asked him kindly for the discussion to be done). But he pushed on.
The things he was saying started to become unbelievable. Every fact I presented was rebutted by him with a personal statement saying I was “rude,” “uninformed,” or “ignorant.” He would then ignore the facts, bring up something unrelated, and ramble on. When I presented actual facts and links to my sources, he provided “quotes” from unreliable and biased sources that contradicted with factual and recent sources. He even went as far as to sharing a couple of conspiracy videos he found on YouTube to back up his claims. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
In my initial response, I brought up the gender-based double standard that exist in comparing the two major candidates in this election: using a woman’s husband to judge whether she is fit enough to serve as president was sexist when compared to the amount of credentials a man’s wife has needed to make him qualified. That point made up just a small portion of my lengthy response, but it seemed to be the only thing he retained, and he ignored almost every other fact that I brought up. His responded saying that my statement was “rude” and that he didn’t understand that it was sexist use allegations against Bill Clinton as a tool to educate one’s vote for his wife.
Finally, he stated that “Hillary has a moral deficit” based on her husband’s alleged actions. He never acknowledged my original statement about the comment being sexist and continued to spew them out by connecting a woman’s temperament and judgment with her husband’s actions.
There were so many times that he ignored the meat of what I was saying— he would just accuse me of “uninformed” or “stupid” for the things I was saying. After I stopped responding and my family and friends joined in stop his ravaging, he left us with one more thing, something that really grinds every gear in my body. This guy, filled with ignorance and hate, stated, “this is actually the best because I listed like 8 points about HRC’s presidential campaign that make her a bad person/criminal and provided sources. And everyone else commenting couldn’t rebuke my statements.” Are you kidding me? All that work, all those fact-checking that I did, all of the months of research that I did, and all of the passion that I put in to be a knowledgeable voter and citizen of this country— this is what I get? To be the joke of some arrogant troll on the Internet who “thinks” he won something? What did I spend all of that time debunking those “like 8 points” for? They were all disregarded and replaced to personally attack my intelligence. And can we please remember every time he ignored a point that he was asked to “rebuke?”
I’ve seen this happen countless times: people are attacked for their opinions and beliefs. But, it’s not only that—it’s happening to people who are educated, citizens who take the time out of their busy lives to find reliable, unbiased sources to form an opinion. They’re ridiculed based not on actual facts or misguided information, but on this “right or wrong” premise in which some parties believe. When it comes to someone’s opinions there is no room for you to “prove anything.” It’s their right as a human being and as a citizen of this country, thankfully. There needs to be a line drawn between opinion and facts, though. Discussing facts and debating them against each other is perfectly fine, but when it resorts to simply attacking someone’s belief, it no longer becomes productive.
And that’s what’s important about it: these arguments are not healthy or productive, and arguing with those types of people are not going to get you anything you want. My advice to anyone being trolled is to stick to your gut. Don’t let them undermine what you know, and don’t argue just for the sake of arguing.
Most importantly, it’s not okay to do what this guy did. You cannot just rip someone’s voice down just because “you can.”
Sure, you’re right: by law you can do that. But, at what point does it stop being constructive and simply apply that “moral deficit” he was referring to earlier?