We will be continuing to have important discussions about what to do in a Trumpian America. The importance has only grown greater in the last week, in the last day, which made clear beyond any question who Trump and his willing instruments and allies are, and what they are doing. Therefore, we can’t afford to waste words.
Unfortunately, that’s what we’re often doing: wasting words.
I am, not surprisingly, talking about the trolls who pop up here and in other public forums. Their whole reason for being is to get all of us to waste our words, and by extension, our time, energy, determination, and hope. And yet many continue to play their game, with the same outcome every time: The troll doesn’t ever cede any point. We spend our time venting our outrage, instead of sharing insights into what is happening, and what we might do in the face of the direst emergency in our lives. Contributors like MarkedMan get tired of the pointless noise and give up participating. In other words, the troll wins.
The moderators of this forum have taken great steps to minimize the trolling. While the situation is vastly better, thanks to them, moderation can never be the complete solution. Because of the nature of comments sections, the door will always be open to someone who wants to, under some pseudonym, toss a flaming bag of poop into the room. It’s up to all of us, not just them, to handle that situation.
Let me switch metaphors for a moment to discuss what to do (or not to do). Instead of troll, a better moniker might be a poisonous toad.
In nature, toxic creatures can be venomous or poisonous. Venomous creatures inject their toxin into their victims, through fangs, stingers, or other delivery mechanisms.
Poisonous creatures use toxins more passively. Another animal has to come into contact with the poisonous creature — often by trying to eat it — in order to ingest the toxin. Poisonous frogs and toads are the most famous of these creatures. You see them in zoos and aquariums, and you read about infestations of them, such as the blight of cane toads in the Americas (including the US) and Australia.
Internet trolls are both venomous and poisonous. The venomous part is hard to avoid. They spew their toxin into forums like this one like the spitting cobra. Fortunately, the toxin, in that case, isn’t fatal. We can ignore it. Discussion can continue, as long as we wipe off the spew and continue with what we were doing.
The fatal toxin is the poison we ingest by engaging with the troll. Useful discussion ends. We thrash around in spasms of words, going nowhere. We lose attention to more important matters than trying to convince the unconvinceable. We willingly succumb to exactly what the toxin is designed to do.
We don’t have to touch the poisonous toad.
Eventually, other animals learn which toads are poisonous, and which are not. (Tragically, some don’t: a lot of dogs have died because of poisonous toads.) We are certainly smarter than other animals — that’s supposed to be our evolutionary superpower, after all. Once we learn that something, or someone, is poisonous, we can simply avoid them.
