You’re On Your Own. Like a Trolling Stone.

Ho-lee crap, everyone. I thought Shocked&Appalled was done with spraying his white privilege troll poop all over my blog, but he came back for a third round. This time, it was in response to my post about joking about race without being racist.

I thought that recent post of mine was, if not the best thing I’ve ever written, thoughtful and analytical and pretty fair.

Apparently, I was wrong.

Would you like to read this latest offering? Of course you do. *munches popcorn*

“Either this is brilliant satire or you really are a moron.

You take issue with stereotyping yet manage to be a near-perfect incarnation of the hectoring liberal elitist who sneers at the masses while hypocritically lecturing them about their myopia.

Who says stereotypes aren’t informative?

Well, you apparently.

Newsflash: the Mind’s function is to categorize the environment: this inevitably involves simplification and therefore some element of distortion. However, stereotypes are products of networks and their content can’t long survive the import of anomalous data. In short, ‘prejudice’ is a product of many sources of information – collective wisdom – and tends to provide reliable accounts of myriad phenomena. It may not be perfect, but it nonetheless retains a high degree of accuracy. It’s crazy to dismiss these processes out of hand and imply that stereotypes are uninformative – as you seem to.

Those of us who find amusement in the absurdities of other groups do so because we CAN: ‘groups’ really are greater than the sum of their parts and it is possible to identify amid the variation common themes. e. g. gypsy life is nomadic; in the context of ‘civilization’ (settled communities with the institution of private property) such a way of life contains within it a logic which lends itself to criminality. Why? i.) absence of certain factors in R. Axelrod’s three conditions for establishing reciprocity ii.) little capital to fall-back on iii.) lack of connections to established communities; little or no stake, few opportunities given absence of connections, little emotional attachment, etc. This is borne out by crime figures which show a marked increase in criminal activity coinciding with the presence of travelling communities. (Of course, correlation doesn’t prove causation but the coincidence is, for Travellers and their lefty acolytes, uncomfortably synchronous.)

I note you once again assume that ‘racism’ is so self-evidently iniquitous that it requires no elaboration and no fundamental definition. How very telling. Perhaps ‘racism’ is a myth? (Not in the sense that minorities don’t experience prejudice but that maybe minorities are exploiting human empathy and a misplaced sense of white guilt in order to undermine white ethnocentrism and so self-esteem – the basis of action, after all, is confidence – and so further their own interests?’)

Discuss (that is, if you can bring yourself to actually confront an alternative viewpoint).”

HA. Yeah. Okay, player.

Note to anyone who thinks about commenting on this blog: I like good faith discussions and I welcome disagreement, but if you want me to engage in an actual conversation with you instead of reposting your comments in a separate post so I can point out how ridiculous you are, you have to follow two rules. You have to treat me with respect, and you have to agree with the very basic principle that no group of people – whether the group is defined by ability, race, gender, sex, orientation, etc. etc. cover all my bases – is inherently superior or inferior to any other group of people. (I’m willing to reconsider that stance in the case of hipsters vs. non-hipsters, but that’s the only exception, because hipsters are terrible.)

In other words, you can’t be an asshole, and you can’t a) call me a moron and b) spend a really long time justifying your bigoted viewpoints and getting REALLY ANGRY when I don’t agree with you about said bigoted viewpoints.

(I don’t have to point out the irony in his sarcastic assertion that I don’t entertain alternative viewpoints, when he’s the one flipping his shit because he doesn’t agree with my alternative viewpoint, right? I didn’t think so. Y’all are smart.)

The part that amuses me the most, really, is his demands that I define what racism is, and his anger that I refuse to actually respond to him and tell him what constitutes racism.

Here’s the thing about blogging: personal blogs fall in a weird little gray area between the public and private sphere. In other words, by posting something online, a blogger is inviting the entire literate world to read the post. The blogger should, therefore, be prepared for any kind of reaction, positive or negative.

However, because the blog is the blogger’s personal platform, the blogger also has a right to filter and moderate each comment and decide which ones s/he wants to make public for everyone to see and respond to.

In a way, blogging and sharing opinions is like owning a museum. People are free to step in and view the work whenever they want, and they might not like or appreciate every piece in the gallery, and they are free to express positive or negative opinions about any piece.

Shocked&Appalled is not acting like a person who wants to browse through my museum and offer opinions or engage in discussions about the pieces in my gallery. He stopped by once to complain about one piece in the gallery. When I didn’t engage in conversation, he framed the complaint in a wordier way, but it was a complaint nonetheless. Now he’s stopping by for a third (and who knows – fourth?) time, and he’s shocked and furious that I haven’t taken down that piece in my gallery after he said he didn’t like it, and he’s demanding that I take it down – or, at the very least, agree with him that the piece sucks. Instead of, I don’t know, giving up and browsing through to find a piece that was more to his taste.

As for the rest of the comment – again, I’ll leave it up to the rest of you to mock as you will (or won’t. It’s your choice.) But this is the last time I’m going to post something that he says, because soon, I’ll reach the point where I no longer find these comments funny, and will simply find them boring. Now how do I set up that spam folder…