A while ago I was thinking about how divisive people seem to be today, and how eager some seem to be the first to tear others down. There appears to be a new radar in town, the Troll radar, and the incessant beeping as they search seems as constant as life support systems in hospitals. Those with these new gadgets appear to be on high alert for offence or other things they can collectively stomp to smithereens.
I kind of get it. Some things can use a wee stomp. There is nothing quite so great as speaking your passionate piece and dropping your mic, walking away with a bit of sashay while your adoring fans scream and chant your name. Although, I think that in trying to capture that moment, there are a lot of people dropping the mic, only to scoop it up again when the person they are talking to talks back, and then it just becomes a verbal school yard brawl, while a bunch of over excited children run in circles around them egging them on with chants of “fight! fight! fight!”.
How much better could things be if we could actually speak to each other and explain points of view and how we got there, instead of looking for those easy prey mic drop moments? What if instead we just tried to listen and question, without the eye rolls and finger shaking, and step outside of our armor for just a few minutes and be people instead of warriors? Perhaps we need to not just slide open the peephole of our fortresses and we might need to open the door a crack? Or has it been so long we just pad locked the inside for double security and don’t know where the key is? That last one feels a bit like me, stashed away in my hermity land, and I’m not sure exactly when my fortress became my prison. The hashtag that I ended my last post with, #loveyourtrolls (as these little baddies can be both within and without), sort of felt like the key to that door (or the rude metals the key would be forged with) and has been stuck in my head ever since.
You see, the weird thing is, I thought it would be a popular and well used hashtag. That people would have already piled on this positive vibe bandwagon, covered it in brightly coloured peace signs, and rounds of kumbaya would already be in full swing as some group, or groups, had taken up the mantle. However, when searching this, as of today and my last post, there appears to be a total of eleven posts total on twitter that used it. Eleven?
I’m not sure why that bothered me, but it seemed quite sad. What a poor lonely troll-ey hashtag that is. I understand that trolls do suck, and no one really likes them, so I shouldn’t be surprised. Yet still, there is a part of me that wants to see that change. It’s probably the monster lover in me, that can’t help but wonder if everything we hate, fear, or despise is truly what we think it is. What happens if you attempt to bridge the gap with the thing under the bridge, to invite the hated to the dance (without hijinks and only out of kindness) and attempt to include the unincludeable (not now spellcheck, I’m on a soapbox, geez!). I want to reach out my hand to that warty, oozy claw and help pull it out of the mud. Who knows, maybe with a little love, the troll might not be so troll-ey after all. They might even have the cure for something or some other fabulous things we all need, and they just needed to pull all the anger out of their butt to get to that place to share (Fact, that’s where anger lives). Just maybe don’t shake their hand right away.
So, I think maybe I need to do my part to pump it up. Just for fun and to spread some positive stuff out there and see what happens. The wanna be scientist in me liked this experiment. The wanna be do-gooder also thinks this would be a good idea. The previously mentioned troll on my back was even on board (ha ha). So, what the heck? I’d like to live in a world where love beats hate, trolls can be redeemed and maybe even included (which I think might magically turn them into unicorns, but we’ll see how that hypothesis pans out) and people don’t write each other off because they disagree. I’m going to go on a vaguely bloggy mission (oh, do I hear another self challenge brewing? Yess!) to tie in a shout out to troll love to the next posts I do until Halloween 2023. Will this change the world? Maybe. Ok, probably not. But it will amuse me and add a little love to a very underused hashtag so that’s good enough.
Here goes nothing for Hermity challenge 2022! Lets say 52 posts with a tie in but different topics. Tricky, but not impossible. Well, at least I think. Feel free to ride along and see if this freak show crashes and burns in the first month. *cue manical laughter* Let me know what you think in the comments below, and please, feel free to join me in using this sad little tag, so perhaps together, we can send some good vibes into the troll-ey depths and perhaps manage to make some wee desiccated little hearts plump up and tusky, gap toothed smiles flash in the darkness across the innerwebs. Or at least tick ’em off. Heh heh heh.
Lives In Stone 