The Internet is filled with a lot of annoying people. Sometimes they’re simply irritating because their educational level is so clearly so low. Other times they’re just trolls. It’s that latter category that mostly latched onto the “honeygate” ‘scandal’ involving Richard Dawkins, but I suspect a fair number are just unable to think beyond a very superficial level.
Briefly: Richard Dawkins made a Twitter post complaining about having a jar of honey confiscated as he made his way through a UK airport. The Internet lit up with mocking posts on Twitter and in the blogosphere about how Dawkins lost his dear jar of honey. Here’s his post:
Bin Laden has won, in airports of the world every day. I had a little jar of honey, now thrown away by rule-bound dundridges. STUPID waste.
Again, most of these people were simply trolls. They damn well know this isn’t about a jar of honey or any other particular liquid. The complaint is about overly strict airport security that does little to nothing to secure anything other than the paychecks and inflated egos of TSA and other needless agents.
But this is the Internet. This is where people go to be assholes.
This post isn’t so much about the annoyance of Richard Dawkins by a bunch of mooks. It’s about the fact that people routinely ruin worthwhile and potentially very fruitful discussions because they just want to watch the world burn. Or, less dramatically, they’re dickface trolls. These people are like less skilled versions of people who spread computer viruses. Viruses that are designed simply to hurt the computers of people, not to gain money, scam people, make political points, etc, but simply to cause harm are the worst ones out there. It’s like a vandal throwing a rock through your kitchen window. There’s no reason behind it. There’s no logic or thought behind it. The entire ‘point’ is to be an asshole. These are bad people.
Now, I don’t have the blog traffic for anything to come of this post, but I suspect a recounting of this post by these sort of people would paint me as a defender of honey or Dawkins or something this post isn’t about. Because why not? Intentionally misunderstanding something isn’t dishonest assholery. No, no, it’s just funny. Sure.
Filed under: Rant | Tagged: Honeygate, Richard Dawkins, Trolls | 1 Comment »
For the Sake of Science 