It’s Not Edgy to Be A Douche

So as per fairly usual in my life, I had a minor encounter with a Facebook troll this morning. The conversation ended when I called him out by saying “So you’re just being a troll and you don’t care who gets hurt as long as you’re entertained” and he liked my comment. Apparently he found it really cool to be someone who hurt others. He also felt the need to point out that he associated with people that I would apparently “be disgusted by”, and insist that he was highly empathetic and open minded.

These are the classic troll behaviors. More than anything they illustrate to me that trolls have a few assumptions in common:

1.They are not constrained by the same beliefs that others are constrained by.
2. They are rebellious or forward thinking because they refuse to believe what others believe.
3. They are better than others for not being bothered by mere things like “words”.
4. When it really comes down to it, they’re good people.
5. It’s fun to hurt people as long as it’s over things that “don’t matter” like words.
6. When you hurt people over “stupid” things, you’re really just helping them see an edgier or more free thinking way. You’re doing them all a favor.

Unfortunately most of these assumptions and beliefs are simply wrong. Sometimes when you refuse to believe what others believe, you’re just wrong. There is in fact nothing wrong or overly sensitive about being hurt by words. We as human beings have a drive for acceptance, and words are in fact a form of acting. There is nothing about being cruel with your words that is helping another person or enlightening them to their own idiocy.

I’m about to drop some crazy knowledge on you guys here, so brace yourselves: being mean is not edgy. Being mean is not new. Acting superior and gaslighting people? It’s pretty much the oldest trick in the book. I’m going to be real honest: being mean is just straight out boring. EVERYONE knows how to do it. People even do it all the time without meaning to. Most people probably spend the majority of their time being mean to someone.

In addition, just disagreeing with people doesn’t make you right. In fact disagreeing with a lot of people also does not make you right. Sometimes (I know this will be hard to believe) the majority does actually have the correct facts! There is nothing about disagreeing with other people that is inherently cool, edgy, forward thinking, or good.

You might think that you’re looking real damn good compared to those sissies who overreact. You might think you’re making a statement. You might think you’re more rational or reasonable. But here’s the honest truth: you just look like a douche. Not only that, but you often look pretentious, uninformed, rambling, and unintelligent.

All those little lies that you feed yourself to pretend that you’re coming out on top, that it’s survival of the fittest and you’re the one surviving, that it’s just a big game? You know they’re lies. You know that we are built to be social animals and that at this point in our history we’ve moved past viciously ripping each other to shreds in order to survive. You know that it’s just plain outdated and redundant to do that crap at this point.

So please trolls, just be honest with yourselves. You’re not doing any of this for good reasons or because you’re really a great person. You’re doing it because you like to be mean. The sooner you accept that the sooner we can all move on.

Religion and Good People

I have a confession: I love watching crappy TLC shows. I have no shame about it. Say Yes to the Dress, Sister Wives. I am all about it. Lately I’ve been binge-watching 19 Kids and Counting, a show about an extremely religious family that subscribes to things like purity culture, homeschooling, and missionary work around the world. And while I find this as entertaining as the rest, there are a few trends in the show that I feel need to be called out as real trends that people in these traditions tend to follow. Many of these involve acting in ways that they feel make them a “good person”, or at the very least that portray them as such to others, however many of them seem to me to be completely irrelevant to goodness or morality.

The first one of these has to do with gratitude. In 19 Kids and Counting, the youngest daughter, Josie, was born nearly 4 months premature. The family wasn’t certain if she would survive infancy. She did, and throughout the season of the show that I was watching they were continually expressing gratitude for her life. This seems wholly appropriate. However what seemed odd to me was that they were expressing gratitude to God without once expressing gratitude towards the doctors and nurses who clearly worked incredibly hard to keep their daughter alive. No mention of the NICU where she stayed, no mention of the good people who helped her or their family, no mention of the hard work that scientists have done to allow a baby like this to survive. These are people who are living with their daughter on oxygen every day so that she can remain alive and healthy, and they choose to say nothing about the other human beings who made this possible.

Of course if you believe in God it makes sense to be grateful to God, but if you want to be a good person you should also express your gratitude towards the people who have helped you, people who could hear and NEED to hear about the difference they’ve made in your life. It seems odd to me that these people can express such deep gratitude to their God and ignore the time, sacrifice and effort that other human beings have made for their family.

A similar example comes in their service work. The Duggars speak often about the value of service, and how they want their children to enjoy serving others. This is a great value! I applaud it. However all the examples that I have seen of their “service” are simply proselytizing. They volunteered for a local aid organization, however the only aid that this organization provided was Christian materials dropped from planes. They went on a trip to Central America to help remote villages without water or electricity, however instead of bringing much needed supplies or helping build a well, they brought Christmas presents, Bibles, and put on a Christmas pageant.

“Service” is not just doing something abroad or for a nonprofit. Service has to involve actually helping other people…serving them. You have to do something that they need or want in order for it to be service. You need to actually be providing a service to someone, not simply forcing things on them that they don’t want. Proselytizing is not service, and acting as though it is will give your children an extremely skewed vision of what it means to be a good person.

Choosing God over other people does not make you a good person. The Bible has a lot of bits about loving your neighbor in it, and it seems to me that if you want to show love for God you should do more than simply talk about your gratitude to him and actually go out and do something for other people that helps them. I realize that for some people, exposing others to God is something that helps them, but maybe we could show them some mercy and gratitude in this life too.