One approach to evil is to pretend it doesn’t exist. One approach is to pretend if we were just nicer, evil would stop. Might be time to feed the unicorns.
I am not suggesting that we need to be nicer and I am not pretending evil doesn’t exist. Perhaps I am not explaining this well or perhaps we just don’t agree.
I’ve spent some time on another forum wherein sociopathic trolls spend unimaginable amounts of time antagonizing normal people for sport. Talking about the trolls fed their sociopathy and drove them to greater ‘heights’ of antagonism - all without ever getting off the couch. THey were able to disrupt and disturb people verbally. It was a long hard lesson for us because they were tolerated and we felt motivated by decency to confront them - but online confrontation is a different battle field and the venom that we put in our posts ‘fed’ them what they wanted. We are not violent sociopaths so ‘forceful’ posting was fatiguing for us but it was refreshment for them. What I came to recognize is the pleasure that they got thinking of ways to rattle us and then reading all our responses (oh joy). THe online battle requires different strategy.
How do you respond to a bully? SHow fear? That’s what some of these posts do in my opinion. “They are coming to get us!” is DELIGHTFUL for sociopaths and race baiters to read.
I think there is a core of violent types who will indeed take to the streets and they are recruiting all the time and they can point to some threads and posts and say “See how scared they are?” How do you think they respond when they see public “worry” about what they might do next? They love it and they threaten more. And then they show their friends the response their tweeets or online threats receive and their friends then post to out do them.
Some people reading of online worries can’t wait for a piece of that and they join in - even if they don’t plan to get off the couch and riot - it’s too much fun threatening people and seeing their threats and posts retweeted with concern. Don’t you think they read the web to see if their threats are repeated elsewhere? Aren’t they working to craft the threats that get the biggest response? There’s narcissism and sociopathy at play here and I’d rather not feed it. I am not saying “They won’t do it - it’s just a threat.” I am saying there’s a portion of the stuff going around that is a delicious head game for the perps. Riot organizer types are trying to shift the numbers in their favor - they want to motivate those who like head games to actually take a baseball bat to the street - but how to entice the lazy, sociopathic cowards from getting off the couch when bragging of your riot prowess and reading frightened responses is so much fun? Show them frantic posts of concern and claim that it would be easy - the cream puffs are already scared just READING threats etc.
Yes - I believe they have ramped up enough by now, with the help of the media, that they will riot in part because they want to teach us that we’d better think again next time. But why lose the online head game to them?
LEt’s say they say they are going to riot and hurt LOTS of people. Then they eagerly log on to see what kind of response they got. What kind of response to give them? Post to each other that you are organizing to film riot participants surreptitiously (yeah a lame expample but go with it) and organize to pressure congress to strip participants of welfare, organizing a centralized private website harvesting threatening tweets/posts etc. to assist law enforcement or think of some other response THEY DON’T WANT or is it better that posts dwell on how awful it’s going to be - which is what they want?
The posts that calmly say “Yeah well I am tired of it, bring it” are more effective in the head game because it says “yeah blah blah blah blah” and strips the couch rider of the fear response without their being able to imply that they are being provoked - it’s clearly a calm, determined response that doesn’t feed their ego or escalate.
Some angry posts unintentionally escalate feed the other side because threats from our side ‘suddenly’ seem like just words and they shift to “Yeah? Prove it”
Maybe the simplest way I can express this is to say that avoiding fearful contemplation online (in public forums )of what they will do next or using their failed tactics (I GONNA BREAK YOUR HEAD OPEN!) are less effective than the walk softly carry a big stick, uh huh so bring it, or “well if they really want to go to jail let’s help put them there” and pointing, perhaps, to the failure of Obama and noting that any and all race riots could have been avoided by The Won tsk tsk tsk....if he were at all qualified for office. Yes - let’s talk about leadership and what our government is doing to respond to the obvious signs of organizing and threats of riot. What are our congressmen doing, what does Obama have to say about that over due discussion of race. Let’s get Sharpton on recod as saying he approves and condones and is helping to organize riots OR ask him to show the public that he has any standing in the community to bring about a reasoned response - if SHarpton is truly helpless to address the riots in their planning stages then lets organize to exclude him from megaphone opportunities and tacit social acceptance he presently has (e.g., formal one week boycott of channels who film him commenting on how it’s gonna be UGLY if we don’t find Zim guilty) and any others who have too much on the balance sheet (lots of credit toward fanning race riots and professed inability to do anything about it) Yeah you can see I don’t have a solid strategy but I just needed to try to present the idea that the strategy must be different to be effective.