[H]ere is some political advice – free, without charge, gratis, and completely on the house – for the University of Vermont: its administration, its faculty, its students.
You are being trolled. Act accordingly.
Same goes for the administration, faculty, and students at Champlain College.
Being in an academic community, hardly any of you need a definition of trolling. But for the few who might, and for the outsiders who may be listening even though this advice is not for them (but no charge for them, either), trolling is defined (by the Urban Dictionary) as “the deliberate act … of making random unsolicited and/or controversial comments on various internet forums with the intent to provoke an emotional knee-jerk reaction.”
OK, one little twist here. The trolls who are trying to scam you did not use an internet forum. Either because they have a fondness for the quaint, or perhaps because they don’t know how to use the internet (from the evidence before us, we may wonder whether they know how to do much of anything), they are trolling the old fashioned way: words printed on paper posted up around campus.
No matter. The mechanism is irrelevant. This is still a troll.
Meaning there is only one intelligent response. They are trolls. You need not be a trollee. If the aim of the trolls is to “provoke an emotional knee-jerk reaction,” the appropriate response is not simply to refuse to engage in an emotional knee-jerk reaction. The appropriate response is not to react at all. Don’t say a word. Ignore them. It will drive them batty.
Alas, since you – and indeed we – don’t know who these folks are (though law enforcement may have some idea), you and we will not see them being driven batty, depriving us of the joy of reveling in their outrage and anguish.
But think of the simple pleasure of imagining it.
No. That’s not nice. No one should revel in anyone’s anguish even if it is deserved. These are our fellow human beings, however confused they may be. They are also our fellow citizens whose social and political bona fides should not be denied even if they would deny them to others.
Or to put it another way, they are not – to use the term a recent political candidate wishes she hadn’t used – deplorables. Nobody is. Some people hold and espouse deplorable beliefs. The beliefs should be deplored. The people can be criticized for those beliefs, but they are not irredeemable.
Besides, in this case, their troll wasn’t in and of itself deplorable. It was, if anything, what you folks in academia would call anodyne, a word almost no human being has ever used in conversation but which is favored by some professors and writers because they think it makes them appear erudite.
All the trolling message said (in capital letters) was: “it’s okay to be white.”
So it is. As it is okay to be of any other pigment, background, or heritage. Everybody is just folks.
In and of itself, the statement is not merely accurate and inoffensive (that’s ‘anodyne’ for those not trying to seem erudite). It is constitutionally protected free speech, raising questions about whether UVM and Champlain College should have ripped the posters down.
There is, to be sure, a less inoffensive political context here. The phrase “it’s okay to be white” has been associated with – if it was not coined by – those who think it isn’t okay to be anything but white. Among the entities that spread its use was something called /pol/, one of the discussion boards of the 4chan website, which has influenced white supremacists including the neo-Nazi message board the Daily Stormer.
It is, then, a not very subtle indicator of bigotry. So it’s easy to understand why people want to raise their voices in protest, especially young people, who may be forgiven for taking themselves too seriously (as, with less excuse, do many not-so-young people). Some of them may be tempted to speak out, to arrange a demonstration, to demand … well, it doesn’t matter what, to demand that somebody do something.
Resist that temptation. Remember, you’re being played. Unlike many recently created terms, this one – trolling – is soundly based on its source. Its source is fishing. The trolling angler drops several lines from a boat, then rows the boat so that the brightly colored lures spin around at the end of those lines, flashing vividly under the water, tempting the hungry fish.
The fish who succumbs to that temptation gets eaten.
Do not get eaten. Swim freely around the lake and take pleasure in the frustrated fulminations of the bigot in the boat.
That’s for tonight. Tomorrow, you can repent for taking such pleasure.
