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If you post content on the internet or consume a lot of it, you will encounter wankers of the first order. You already know this. But how should you respond to their insults?
You shouldn’t.
I take it in the shorts almost every day on forums, Twitter, blogs, Facebook, you name it. And the only time I respond to the wanker is when I screw up and forget a mantra I developed several years ago. Whenever I encounter jerkery, I ask myself:
“Try to remember the insulting comment before this one.”
Truth is, if I didn’t respond to the second-to-last insult then it’s almost impossible for me to remember it. It just fades away in my memory. This mini revelation – that I will forget the insult if I don’t respond to it – keeps me away from the “reply” button almost every time.
If you’ve seen the movie “Memento” then you know where I got this trick to remember to forget.
When, however, I do respond to a mean comment, the exchange gets burned into my brain. I can still remember a few heated exchanges from 10 years ago – blow for blow. That’s not healthy.
This entry, by the way is my last rant on this blog. I had about five more rants lined up, but I decided that I’d rather spend the time building something.
Next up: The 2018 Anarchist’s Gift Guide.
— Christopher Schwarz
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There’s an old saying,
“The fight starts with the second blow.”
I have not heard that. Good one.
I think the same can be said for clever/pithy remarks. The number of times I have read a post (yours or others) then typed out a comment that would just leave the internet in stitches and then …… simply deleted it before sending. I ask myself why did I think the world needed to read that remark. If the answer isn’t “It would somehow further the original posters point- then gone. The web is too full of rants and way to full of clever buffoons.