How's your weather? We had some very pretty snow earlier today. It covered up the frozen chicken on the neighbour students' lawn ... the chicken was from a failed New Year's eve barbecue. Oops, that wasn't what I was writing about!
My quick summary of what I read about trolls in a recent blog by Elizabeth May,* and in follow-up comments to it, is written below this post. This evening, I'm getting past the trolls.
What it comes down to is that, people like us – who are trying to save the world in our spare time – need to find ways to put across good ideas and good examples of saving the world. We must not get drawn into arguments that end up with us defending our good ideas by saying why someone’s criticism shouldn’t be listened to. We just need to repeat the good idea, and add another good idea to reinforce it … and even find several other places to tell that good idea.
Also, if you are as hooked in to the internet as I am, keep in mind that most people don’t even read the comments after an article because they take too much time. So you don’t need to argue with the criticizers and trolls. Just get out and do the good thing.
All the best,
Why's Woman
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There are a lot of people who do like to write criticism for their own joy in ‘hearing’ themselves. They are one level of troll. Other trolls are hired by governments and companies to monitor the internet for key words and topics to do with their employers’ interests, especially interests that have to do with money, political power and environment issues. They respond as quickly and antagonistically as possible to tie up the original writer’s and commenters’ time as they defend their ideas or try to disprove the trolls. Trolls also monitor websites where people are supposed to say they like a person or event or movie or opinion, basically ‘voting’ many times to enhance the troll’s employer’s side. Trolls are trained to put together comments that use up-to-date terms, images and phrases – the sort of dumbed down media sound bites that surround us.
*Green Party – blog: http://greenparty.ca/blogs/7/2010-12-29/call-greens-take-internet-comment-pages#comments
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