Peter Fenzel, Mark Lee, and Matthew Wrather drink the haterade.
Overthinking It Podcast Episode 13, the beginning of our uninterrupted weekly run, was published 6 years ago today. “Crossing Sections off The Map”
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Yay, a shout out to Emil from Poland; I love that guy.
I want to propose a distinction between “hating” (in the sense of what a “hater” does, as opposed to what the KKK does) and “bullying.” Hating is “punching up”–targeting those with more power than you, bullying is “punching down”–targeting those with less.
What makes this interesting is that there is not always agreement between all parties in a punching transaction who is punching up and who is punching down and a lot of the discourse (drink) about hating involves defining which is happening. One of the things that a person is saying when they define their interlocutor as a hater is that the interlocutor is less than them and therefore the hating is irrelevant.
On the other hand, I think some of the most virulent attacks(mortal attacks, I suppose, if the other mode is venial) occurs when the attacking folks perceive themselves as punching up at a more powerful foe when that may not be accurate. I suspect many or most of those who throw horrible things at women who wrote about video games genuinely feel like those women are in a position of greater power that is a danger to the attackers. I think they are wrong and they are bullies in the same vein as the original Klan–which also saw itself I suspect as fighting against foes with greater power than them rather than as terrorizers of the least powerful members of society.
But there are cases that are less clear-cut. Since I seem stuck on American history, let’s go back to the years leading up to independence and imagine a crowd of Sons of Liberty hanging an effigy of a tax collector. Are they haters punching up at the British Empire, arguable most powerful institution in the world or are they bullies violently threatening a single unpopular individual? The answer might be a simple “yes.”
DRINK SPITE! A delightful combination of lemon-lime and bile flavours.
My drink is Vitriol (patent pending). It is the nearly 100% proof alcoholic byproduct of Haterade fermentation, which is formed of the microbial processing of the artificial flavours and colours that put those that drink Haterade in such a foul mood.
If you drink said Vitriol, you will either vomit due to the natural out-workings of the hate which must spew forth from ones mouth in order for Vitriol to come to fruition, or, like any other good alcoholic beverage, you will vomit anyway after having too much of this potent fuel for negative conversation-stopping liquid of negativity.
Mark, the article you mentioned during the podcast episode, about someone meeting their troll and it turned out to be the teenaged son of a friend, was by Leo Traynor:
http://www.traynorseye.com/2012/09/meeting-troll.html
There’s also this interesting interview with a troll at Index on Censorship, where the guy they interviewed actually has quite sophisticated reasons of his own for trolling Facebook memorial pages:
http://www.indexoncensorship.org/2011/09/interview-with-a-troll/
There’s also this wonderful video ‘Thank You Hater’ by comedian Isabel Fay, featuring a few prominent British stand-up comedians who all appear to have been trolled by the same chap:
http://youtu.be/uz2jbCJXkpA