There have been a lot of rant blogs about haters, trolls and bullies on PMC recently. Personally, I feel that most of these have been, at best, approaching the issue from the wrong direction, and at worse, complete rubbish. So I decided to put in my two cents, for whatever they're worth (approximately 9 cents, when adjusted for inflation), and play the devil's advocate on this issue for a minute.



As a child of the digital age, I've spent quite a lot of time on the internet. And as someone who's spent quite a lot of time on the internet, I've seen an awful lot of people accused of being trolls, haters and/or bullies. What struck me as peculiar, however, is how few of these people actually were any of those things.

Let's take a step back for a moment. What exactly are haters, trolls and bullies? How can you tell when someone is or isn't one?

Bullies:

Bullies are a very old phenomenon. A bully is someone who torments others for the feeling of power they get from doing so, by use of violence or public humiliation. On the internet, this generally takes the form of harassment, largely because other forms are nigh impossible to pull off.

Cyberbullies have always baffled me somewhat. The old advice that they'll go away if you ignore them still applies, but unlike in real life where doing so is incredibly difficult, it's incredibly easy on the internet. There's even a button for it on many websites. And even if you can't ignore them, they can't see your reaction unless you go out of your way to let them see your reaction. How do these guys actually manage to be a problem?

While I really can't how cyberbullies ever manage to succeed, I don't deny that they are a real thing. Yet despite this, I've never actually encountered one. I have, however, encountered an awful lot of people who have been accused of being cyberbullies. So what were they doing to be accused of this? Well, generally they’re voicing complaints or offering criticism, almost always genuine and often (but not necessarily) legitimate. I’ve seen people accused of bullying for saying someone’s creations weren’t very good (which is often true), for pointing out flaws in an argument, or even, poetically enough, saying someone was “mean”. Harassment and public humiliation never even entered the equation.


Trolls:


Trolls are hulking, brutish, cave-dwelling creatures from Scandinavian folklore notable for their ability to turn to stone when exp—sorry, that’s wrong. Let me start again.


Trolls are people who enjoy offending, fooling or befuddling others, often solely for their own entertainment.


In my opinion, there are two varieties of trolls.


The first, and by far the most common, are the unskilled trolls. These are people who seek only to offend or to anger, and do so by posing as incredibly exaggerated idiots (which isn’t always ingenuine) or by stating the most absurdly offensive thing they can think of. These trolls are almost always painfully obvious in their troll status, due to a complete lack of subtlety and a tendency to just repeat troll statements made by earlier trolls. While they frequently succeed in offending, their obviousness leads me to see them as minor annoyances at worst (although this is partly because I’m pretty sure I’m not capable of being offended).


The second variety is the skilled trolls, which I must confess I view in a much more positive light. While the unskilled troll seeks primarily to offend, the skilled troll is more interested in fooling people by means of cleverly written, skillfully pulled off and sometimes very elaborate hoaxes, exploring the limits of how ridiculous a hoax can get while still having people fall for it. Unlike their unskilled brethren, skilled trolls have great potential to be entertaining not only to themselves, but to others as well, albeit at the expense of those taken in by the hoax. I’m sure we’re all familiar with such masterpieces as the dihydrogen monoxide hoax and the Society for Indecency of Naked Animals.


Though genuine trolls are incredibly common, I still find that 60-75% of people accused of being trolls are merely voicing their honest, and not particularly absurd, opinions. What’s shocking, and somewhat sad, is that they frequently aren’t even particularly controversial opinions, but simply opinions that differ from those of the person doing the accusing.


Haters:


A hater is someone who has decided that they hate something or someone for no other reason than to be antagonistic. What sets haters apart from bullies and trolls is that haters, as near as I’m aware, do not actually exist. When somebody hates something, there’s always a real reason. It isn’t always a good reason, but it’s always a reason. Often, those accused of being haters don’t even actually hate the thing they’re accused of being haters towards. They might even like it, but feel the need to shed light on flaws they’ve uncovered. Other times, the accuser is simply unwilling to accept that what they’re doing is, to put it lightly, a bad idea. Just as frequently, what they’re doing really is a good idea, but is also very controversial and so it’s only natural that many people are going to object to it (it should be noted, however, that trolls find great fun in posing as this second category of hater-accuser).


Critics:


Whoa! Hold on, BrokenEye. You never said anything about critics before. What’s going on here?


No, I didn’t. But I’m going to address the issue of critics nonetheless, because many people mistaken for bullies, trolls and haters are actually critics.


A critic is anyone who makes light of the flaws in something, which is to say, someone who offers criticism. While the words of a critic are often extremely sardonic, rude and even unnecessarily cruel, their purpose is ultimately benevolent.


Criticism is important, you see, because it makes us aware of the problems with what we’ve done. This, in turn, allows us to strive to improve in those particular areas, so that our work may be better next time, or at very least reallocate our efforts towards a different project at which we’d do a bit better. The vitriol in a critic’s words 99% of the time stems not from hatred, but from a sort of jadedness brought about by the overwhelming amount of other not-very-good-at-all material he’s seen, and the subsequent cynical belief that unless you rub salt on the wounds to really drive the point home, they’ll never get it—which, let’s be honest with ourselves here, isn’t entirely inaccurate.


Admittedly, this is a bit of a self-perpetuating cycle of ill will. The less the creators are willing listen to criticism, the more bitter the critics become. And the more bitter the critics become, the less the creators are willing to listen.


So critics, don’t be a dick. Seriously, don’t. It won’t help. You don’t have to dress the bad news up as good news or withhold it entirely, but at very least try to break the bad news in the way that a nice person would.


And creators, even if the critic is being a dick (which you are, by the way, well within your rights to call him out on), still try to examine his comments and find the delicious chocolaty constructive criticism center hidden behind the bitter candy shell of cruelty (which would be a pretty sick album title, but that’s neither here nor there). Also, you shouldn’t be a dick either. It still won’t help.


Hate or Be Hated?


Alright, this is the part where I get hypocritical, because I’m about to be what is most likely unnecessarily cruel. But I acknowledged the hypocrisy, so that makes it okay. That’s how that works, right? Anyway, I’m gonna try not to go overboard with it though. Just remember what I said about the chocolaty center, because it’s kinda important that you hear what I’m about to tell you:


YOU ARE NOT INFALLIBLE


Ponder that for a moment. Let it sink it. Swish it around in your mouth to really savor the palate. Work up a nice, thick lather, rinse and repeat. If you don’t know what “infallible” means, well there’s a certain poetic irony there which I find absolutely delicious, but if you don’t know what “infallible” means then there’s this wonderful new invention called a dictionary. Look it up.


You got it? Good. Then let’s continue.


You are not infallible. You are not perfect. You are not God’s gift to the internet. How do I know? Because nobody is. Even Jesus Christ himself murdered a fruit tree in anger because it wouldn’t bear fruit out-of-season that one time, and let’s face it, you’re sure as hell no Jesus Christ. You’re not Jesus. You’re not Picasso. You’re not Aristotle. You’re not Einstein. You’re just a regular, flawed human being who makes mistakes just like the rest of us schmucks, and when you get right down to it, so were they. I know when you were little your mommy told you everything you did was wonderful and perfect and we should put it up on the refrigerator where we can look at it very day, but that’s ‘cause she’s your mom (and because popular parenting theory at the time told her she should, so as not to damage your fwagile wittle self-esteem), and if you go through life expecting people to treat you like a goddamn saint who craps diamonds and vomits solid gold while curing peace, feeding cancer and bringing the homeless to the world (not necessarily in that order) you’re only setting yourself for misery when real life fails to live up to your unrealistic egotistical expectations.


So you’re fallible. And being fallible, you made a mistake. You may have even, god forbid, failed at something. And worse yet, someone, o horror of horrors, had the gall to actually point this out to you!!!! What now?


Well stop, take a look around you. Take note of your surroundings. Ask yourself: is the city you live in currently an enormous, smoking radioactive crater? Are the stars falling out of the sky like overripe dates from a tree? Has the great wolf Fenrir broken free from his bonds and slain the very gods themselves? Are the machines turning against their masters and the bodies of the dead walking the earth? Are bottle caps a valid and widely accepted form of currency? No, because it’s not the end of the goddamn world.


You can be upset for a bit. That’s your right. Failure is, after all, quite upsetting. God knows you worked really hard on whatever it was that you just plowed directly into the ground at eight-hundred-odd miles per hour atop a plume of smoke, fire and assorted vital mechanical parts. So by all means feel free to sigh, curse, bury your face in your hands, and even curl up in a fetal position and weep pathetically to yourself in the darkened corner of your locked room if you so choose, but you DO NOT take it out on the flight mechanic who took valuable time out of his day to helpfully inform you that the damn thing was low on fuel, irreparably damaged, and surrounded on all sides by enemy anti-air batteries.


Take the time to listen to what he has to say. Take a look at your work. If his concerns don’t appear to be valid—and please, actually check to make sure this is the case before leaping to that conclusion, lest you end up like Captain Edward Smith or Vice Chief Engineer Anatoly Dyatlov (look it up!)—that’s great! You’ve no reason to get upset at all, so feel free to ignore him. This is the internet, after all, so chances are good that you’ve never encountered him before in your life and will never see him again. He was kind of a dick anyway. Then go get ice cream or something, I don’t know.


But if he’s right… well, that’s another matter entirely. If that’s the case, you swallow your pride and admit (reluctantly, if need be) that you’ve made a mistake. Figure out what you did wrong, figure out how to not do it wrong next time, fix it, if at all possible, and move on. Hey, check it out! You just learned from a mistake. That’s what they’re there for, after all. Don’t you just feel all resourceful and emotionally mature inside? Go get yourself some more ice cream or something, I don’t know.


If the disagreement is around opinion rather than fact—say, for example, ethics, politics or religion—that’s somewhat more complicated than I’m willing to go into here, but listen to what he has to say even if you think he’s wrong. Even if he is, it could give you a little perspective on something or other. Then fallaciously compare him to Hitler. People with opposing viewpoints love it when you do that (no they don’t).


And that’s it. And hey, if you don’t agree with what I’ve said here today, space has been provided below in which you may “bully”, “troll”, and/or “hate” me to your heart’s content.