1. Didja accidentally blow through the whole, "We're using our real names" thing on registration? No problem, just send me (Mike) a Conversation message and I'll get you sorted, by which I mean hammered-into-obedient-line because I'm SO about having a lot of individuality-destroying, oppressive shit all over my forum.
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SW And The Internet Trolls

Discussion in 'The RedBanned Bar & Grill' started by Tino Danielzik, Jun 11, 2018.

  1. What do you guys think about all these "Star Wars and the Internet Trolls" discussions currently?

    Personally, I don't know what the problem is? Block these morons, turn off you comments section, don't get into any fights or try to argue, because you can't argue with these people. It is like back in school, you will always have these out of a Stephen King book retards who are trying to get you into a fight. I don't know, am I simplifying the subject? Maybe it's just because I don't care about people a lot in general. I just don't understand why people are reacting to this stuff so intensely. Maybe someone can explain it to me.
     
  2. In order to be upset by something someone says, you must first assign them value. This part is optional.
     
  3. Well, internet in general is pretty good at showing people's true faces, especially if anonymity is guaranteed. There are folks who'll say things to other people with complete disregard for their feelings and whether they should.

    And then there's people caring too much about the opinions of absolute strangers, like Mike said. Millions upon millions saw Star Wars, and I don't think there were more than a few dozen of people who attacked the actress. And then on top of that being a ridiculously small percentage, she allowed herself to care about their words.

    Isn't the uproar about her apparently being "bullied" IRL? We don't know what happened there so we can't judge, but it's common sense where the line is for that stuff. Few people shouting at you across the street? That's just being a celebrity and people being dicks. People following you all day and screaming at you? That's nearing mental abuse, but there's way to prevent that, too.

    But online bullying is only bullying if you perceive it that way. Unfortunately, many people do.
     
  4. I think that the amount of abuse that celebrities can receive on the internet is far greater than anyone could ever fathom. No matter how thick your skin is, receiving thousands of hateful comments and threats can really get to you. We're not wired to handle this insane amount of harassment.

    While I do agree that a hateful comment can only be enabled if you decide to assign value to it, dealing with hundreds and hundreds of them is another thing altogether. Online bullying is a thing for very concrete reasons, it shouldn't be dismissed as this "easy to fix" issue as you're making it to be. That's why a lot of celebrities have their social network ran by other people, or why some of them tune out from it completely.
     
    Noam Levy likes this.
  5. We do much to wire our children and ourselves. Most people are not conditioned to qualify the opinions of others as an act of self-respect. It's criminal, but we don't tell our children from Day 1 that they're born into a group, but have all the power in the world to decide whom out of the group they admire, respect, value and need worry about the opinions of. Well, some of us do this, and our children don't understand why bullying is a big deal, because it isn't... unless we decide it is. Of course, if you're reading "thousands of hateful comments" every day, you need better things to do with your time. Having been with and married to a celebrity for 12 years, I can assure you that they have absolutely as much control as anybody else about what they focus their attention and time on. Our world is what we make it. We get like the people we're with, and we tend to think the thoughts around us. My advice is absolutely shitcan anybody and anything which does not elevate, inspire, and enrich. People insulting strangers on the internet are, ipso facto, prequalified as people we don't need in our lives. Admired friends or mentors - good people who we know have our best interests at heart - now those are opinions worth considering, at least.
     
  6. While I do agree with you 100% on a philosophical level, this kind of event is still horrible and the practical solution is not that easy. IDEALLY, you only value the opinion of people you know, respect and admire. Practically, you're influenced by the opinions of everyone in some way or another, by a certain degree (the "how much" depends on you specifically).

    If I were to be walking on the street, and everyone would be yelling "why don't you lose weight, you dumb fatass" at me every single day, I would probably be losing weight pretty fucking fast. It's not that I valued the opinion of those people, it's that I didn't want to deal with the constant abuse. And this is true for everyone that lives in a society. Of course, online interactions is a different beast, because you have the ability to open and close the window as you like. However, a lot of celebrities heavily rely on social media present. Their whole persona is often defined by their ability to directly engage with their audience. Closing down the twitter/facebook account is not a possibility sometimes. Blocking/banning people often becomes complex. Hence, that's why I mentioned that most of the times the accounts have to be ran by external people.

    Sometimes harassment is not only innocent cyber-bullying, but it transforms into real-life threats. Trolls write death-threats and all sorts of horrible shit. How do you know that they're trolling or not? The sensible way of handling that is to ignore it altogether, but then again practically is not easy.

    Mike, while I do love and respect the fact that you're able to confront these kinds of situations with a completely logical and rational approach, I think you're in the 1% here. Although I believe this is what people should strive for, I think that this "unaffected by anyone's opinion" view of the world is not realistic. At least not when literally thousands of people are there to bully you.

    I think that if you're a public figure (e.g. an actor) public opinion is literally what you live for. Although I might be wrong here.

    The only point I'm trying to make is that what happened to that actress is awful and I wouldn't dismiss it this easily. "Just ignore them" often works only in an ideal world.
     
    Noam Levy likes this.
  7. You can't please everybody. Sometimes the "disappointed" will go out of their way to provoke you and try to hurt you. I have no idea why.. Because they want to bring you down to their own level?

    People get their feelings hurt by (often baseless) insults, yes, it's a reality. And we can offer two solutions: re-educate and discipline the 0.001% who bully others online (which probably stems from their childhood so it's a tough issue) or just ignore it. "Ignoring it" is something we have absolute control of - it's in our head. And you absolutely can master it through reflection and meditation. I don't mean sitting down in half lotus, rather just thinking about it and quantifying it in your head.

    If all the people who get bullied online suddenly stopped replying and caring about what strangers say, it'd be interested watching the numbers go down. They only write continuously because they're getting a reaction. I would bet you that if the actress, instead of actually taking her IG down, just threatened to do it, there would be an onslaught of mean comments with the aim to provoke her further.
     
  8. Francesco, my friend, yours is the language of resignation and defeat, both of which nature abhors. I espouse no philosophy; I recommend behaviors - behavior so simple a child can do it, and does, when taught. No matter how tortured your rationalizations for self-imposed powerlessness are, they will always remain voluntary limitations you have imposed on yourself. This is not difficult; no moreso than any other behavior. It is only so if you don't do it, and you certainly won't do it if you've predetermined your inability to do so. "Just ignore them," is not advice, and I don't give it. We can rarely end a bad habit or behavior without replacing it with a good one of equal or greater value, which is why I don't say, "Just ignore them," I say instead seek out those of value; opinions and people you respect and admire, and have self-respect with what you spend your energy and time on and who you give them to. I say, "Don't assign value to the unworthy, assign it to the worthy." It is not an "ideal world" fantasy, it is the most basic, elementary skill set one should possess when subject to a mass group of infinite diversity. Like I said, it's an almost unfathomable atrocity that this basic skill isn't taught right next to how to hold utensils, but that failure can be added to list of equally mind-boggling deficiencies of a species 2/3rds of which are starving and the other 1/3rd of which trample each other for shoes with lights in them.

    It is your life, but I wish you greater acknowledgement and use of your power.
     
  9. I'm not arguing against it. You're very right, you all are in this thread.

    What I'm saying is that the magnitude of what happened to her is infinitely greater that what we're used to experience on a daily basis. The fact that it could be 1000 people instead of 1 person really does make the difference. And I'm really trying to drive this point home because we have no way to relate to her; our life is not followed by hundreds of thousands of people.

    Mike was married to a celebrity, but then again I don't know how active he was on social media, or how much he cared to be a public figure at all (from what I've seen on his classes, not a lot). But:
    1) Actors live and die on how much people like them, so they're emotionally and professionally invested in it.
    2) We can't pretend that we can relate to her situation. It's so far away from our reality it's not even funny.

    Well, I personally think that no criticism can ever get to me and that I have 100% control of my life. Although, I recognize that people are different and that we are all part of one big society, and that it's impossible to be completely isolated from it. If it was up to me, and if this was one of my situations, I would be probably agreeing with you and the problem would be probably over in no time. But I'm talking about this in a more general sense.

    Some problems have simple/clear solutions and subpar realistic solutions. Your solution is the absolute most perfect fix to the problem. However, it would be disingenuous to believe that most people would have the willpower to apply it. And for everything I'm saying, we have to keep in mind that this is being applied to the case of a public figure, with all the edge cases I talked about beforehand.

    If you think that the sheer magnitude of the harassment (the "how many people hate you") doesn't change the issue, then my argument is dead wrong. Logically, my response is indeed filled with the language of resignation and defeat, and I would never ever accept sympathy from people on this level. But then again, I'm not most people, and I'm for sure not a public figure, so what do I know?

    Also, a lot of things are easy: why don't people exercise daily? Why don't they read books? Why don't they improve their craft? It's so easy to do it! Except the idea is easy, the execution takes some amount of energy. And that's the catch.

    ===================================================

    My initial point summarized was the following:
    Let's not be too quick to judge the actress, that was a harsh turn of events and I do sympathize with her. In my opinion, it's easy on paper but not that easy in reality.
     
  10. I think you can see it more as a training than as a "meditation". I think it's kind of a habit thing. Like eating too much sugar. It's a habit, it's part of your lifestyle, to get away from too much sugar you have to change your eating habits, your daily routine, until it becomes a new habit of yours. And like Mike said, if you read all these bad comments you probably have too much time. Imagine John Williams having an Instagram account and getting shit for his lastest Star Wars score. The man is a workhorse and don't have the time to read all the stuff, he also has better things to do, to learn constantly, writing things, reading, and on and on. That's his habit and it is similar to mine (no actual comparison to JW!!!), I mean that I am too busy with other stuff on the one hand, but also spending all my other time with good stuff and people I like to be with, I made it a habit of mine. No one ever told me how to do it in the first place, so it took me a long time to actually recognize what my old habits were back in the days, then I was able to change them and it worked, everything else I care about is now locked so deep in my head that I really don't care about the most stuff in current existing. Of course little unsecurities come through from time to time, opening this thread is proof for that.
    Imagine you try just to ignore bullying but don't replace it with something else, you're just sitting there trying not to listen to it, it's not going to work. Like eating sugar, you can't just stop eating sugar alone, you have to replace it with something else, something good, that's the way you start not to care about it anymore.
     
    Aaron Venture likes this.
  11. #11 Mike Verta, Jun 12, 2018
    Last edited: Jun 12, 2018
    Francesco - the best definition for the human race is: Had so much potential. Too bad.

    It's been a handful of DaVincis and Beethovens and, like, that girl who can stack plastic cups at a billion miles an hour, and then just this gigantic, 30,000-year steaming pile of shit comprised of semi-conscious organisms that will fuck each other over for trinkets 24/7. But this isn't our problem; our problem is ourselves. What other people do with that "free will" they've got (nothing) is their problem, and our best chance at changing the world is to be the change and lead by example. Seriously, with an absolutely spiraled-out-of-control population explosion, there are more people than ever and we're all connected. There is absolutely zero reason - nada - not to form exactly the community we wish instead of feeling trapped in some isolated village in the Dark Ages. There's a saying: the weak enslave themselves. And needlessly, at that. "Hey, today I had a 3-hour typing match with an idiot who enjoys hurting strangers on the internet, because I valued his opinion enough to get angry when he called me talentless." Man. That's YOUR fuckin' problem. Have some self respect; your time is worth more than that, you know? And by the way, with 7 billion people on the planet, "thousands" of anything barely registers. And if 3 billion people think your acting sucks, you may want to at least consider some lessons. You know?

    Anyway, get back to being one of the handful.
     
  12. What ?? !!

    Are you trying to say you want to come over to my house ?
     

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