Trolls

For the last several weeks, the U of U student paper, The Daily Utah Chronicle has been running a lot of nasty things in their opinion page. Most of it stems from the writings of two authors (if that's the right word). One author, let's call him "G", is a man who left the LDS Church and can't find enough bad things to say about it on the way out. The other, "K", is a classic right-wing nutjob, somewhere on the political spectrum between Ted Nugent and Attila the Hun. From their collected rants, much shouting, name-calling, and strife have ensued..for the last several weeks, as I said above.

So I wrote in about the situation. My letter was published in Friday's edition of the Chrony. Here it is, for your consideration.

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Stop feeding the trolls
Published: Friday, October 28, 2005

Editor:

As a graduating senior, I feel it is both my place and my right to give a little advice to those of you who are still going to be here for a while. So I'm going to share with you some of the best advice I've ever received: "You don't have to attend every argument you're invited to."

Over the past few weeks, The Chronicle's Opinion Page has seen a large number of rants, insults and inflammatory comments, many of which were written by two particular authors, whom I shall leave unnamed. Their letters typically generate anger, arguments, counter-rants, rebuttals, re-rebuttals and so on, ad infinitum.

These days, we're at the point that almost all we see in the Opinion Page is written by or about these two authors. The situation is so bad that there are now calls for The Chronicle to stop publishing such articles. But The Chrony's journalistic integrity aside, there's an easier solution.

Stop giving the authors what they want. Why do these two gentlemen keep writing these letters? It's not hard to figure out: because of the response they generate. They love seeing how many people they can get to write in saying, "Author X is a genius" or "Author Y is a jerk" (or worse). They get a kick out of the controversy. It makes them feel important. When people write in to comment on what they write, it makes them feel as though they know something the rest of us don't.

Well, loyal readers, you have the ability to put a stop to it. And it's easy to do-just stop responding to their grandstanding. Stop writing in to say how misguided or how brilliant these two authors are. Stop the arguments by deciding to stop arguing. If people stop responding to these provocative opinions, the authors will eventually become bored and move on to something more important in their lives.

I have just one final comment. While I know that the phrase I'm about to use is typically reserved for the Internet, I think it has good real-world application here as well: Stop feeding the trolls.

Michael Scott Martin

Senior, Chemistry