Virtually Speaking…

I did something rather stupid tonight. After tweeting a sarcastic remark about a group in Utah who want polygamy made legal, @adam4004 began building a straw man in a tweet conversation with me, eventually concluding that because I don’t support marriages between siblings but I do support gay marriage, I must be some type of hypocrite.

I feel like such troll bait.

Naive troll bait. I really should know better. I’ve been on the Internet since before Netscape’s first browser. And yet, I allowed myself to get sucked in to his swirling vortex of stupidity.

While walking our dogs afterwards, I thought that, perhaps, it was just partly due to the fact that I often don’t run into such bastions of brainlessness. I use Twitter because I get to select who I listen to, so I can automatically filter our the dumb, banal chatter of superfluous simpletons.

Oh, god, what arrogance! Couldn’t this chap have had something good to say? Might he not have a point? My self-doubt did not last long.

But then, it was anger. Only a thinning line of morality stops me from calling for the destruction of all trolls. They are a plague on society. Their voices, their pointless drivel, their inane chatter, their weak and pathetic arguments, their very being should be cast off from the planet and the whole of the human race be glad for the improvement in the health of our genetic pool.

But that is how it starts, isn’t it? Autocratic and authoritarian rule is a response of those strong in force but weak in the mind. Hate and anger, only the heads of fear, comes in far too many guises.

I would prefer to live in a world where we give everyone equal access to marriage, where individual’s voices can all be heard, where we treat each human being with respect, and intelligent debate of current issues is the norm. But we don’t live in that world. And @adam4004 will continue to spew the same hateful messages, fearful of change and people he does not understand. He will continue to build straw men, baiting and picking fights with people.

I’m not asking anyone to take action against people like @adam4004. I am not asking anyone to visit his home or hurt him in any way.

But I will say one thing. @adam4004, fuck you. Fuck you, you goddamn asshole! Fuck you for ruining the Internet. Fuck you for ruining public discourse. Fuck you for your bigotry and hatred and fear and fear-mongering. Fuck you and the discord that you bring! Fuck you for not respecting me and my family. Fuck you for your hatred. Fuck you and that miserable excuse for a religion you use and twist to support your myopic, self-centered worldview. Fuck you for every gay bashing you encourage, for every person you keep in the closet, for every, single person that you influence. Fuck you for the discriminatory laws you support that keep me from living the United States with my partner. Fuck you for ruining the country I love. Fuck you!