Candidates and Trolls

I love the internet.   I make use of it extensively in my vocation, engineering, and my avocation, writing.   I have several blogs, a Facebook account with a page for my blog, Oldereyes, and a Twitter account (OK, I do absolutely nothing with that but it sounds good).  I play games on the internet, communicate with faraway friends via email, and use it as my primary source of news.  But I don’t love everything about the internet.   I don’t like the way young people seem to substitute online experience for real life.  I don’t like the way the click-driven culture causes material to be posted just to create controversy.   The amount of inaccurate information on the internet … and the number of people who believe anything they read there … make me crazy.   But what bothers me most is the emergence of Trolls, people who stalk the message boards and comment pages posting vitriolic, bigoted and crude commentary on just about anything.   Much of it is political, over the top liberal-conservative name calling but some of it goes beyond the bounds of a civilized society.  It didn’t worry me, though, because I tended to think of it as harmless … I regarded Trolls as pathetic recluses hiding in the anonymity of the internet.  Now I’m worried.  Why?  Things like this:

I love the old days, you know? You know what I hate? There’s a guy totally disruptive, throwing punches, we’re not allowed punch back anymore. … I’d like to punch him in the face, I’ll tell ya.

The Pendulum

When Fox News called the election for President Obama Tuesday night, I received several frantic text messages from my Romney-supporting friends.  What the hell? How did this happen? one said, the answer, of course being that the American people have spoken.   Another threatened to move to another country, while still another complained about the electoral system, since Mr. Romney was leading the popular vote at the time.   If you have been here a few times, you can probably guess that I am disappointed with the result of the presidential election and that is all I’ll say about that here.   If you want to hear more on my political views, you’ll have to go to my other blog, Bud’s Political Rants.  Only kidding.  There is no such blog because I don’t discuss partisan politics.  I do however, discuss the nature of politics in the U.S.A. and what I see as the nature of the country I love.