Got Troll?
“And then he flew at the troll, and poked his eyes out with his horns, and crushed him to bits, body and bones, and tossed him out into the cascade” - Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe
I don't know about you but being told fairy tales when I was young was pretty de rigueur stuff. But with the passing of time, things are admittedly a little hazy. As I alluded to in my first post, 'The Billy Goats Gruff' is the one that has stood the passage of time and has stuck with me for all kinds of reasons.
I doubt that authors Christen and Jørgen had an inkling that their under-the-bridge dweller would feature so heavily in our modern society. The 'troll' is now the literal manifestation of an otherwise seemingly normal and rational human being but with a nasty online alter-ego that gets malicious glee and satisfaction by striking out anonymously with no other intent to ruin someone else's day and thereby making themselves feel...better?
Now, until 2017, I really had no notion of just how prevalent 'troll behaviour' was since I wasn't really into using social media. That changed when I opened our gym and realised that in this day and age, good old fashioned word-of-mouth just didn't cut it any more in terms of getting the news out about the gym. Social media platforms were no longer for rekindling old friendships and staying in touch with family. They had now been hijacked by business and commerce and were the new battle ground for customers (sorry; 'consumers' in the new parlance) and de-facto extension of said word of mouth.
Enter my first ever troll.
That's right, the dreaded Google 1-star review. I not going to lie, as a new business owner fresh in the world of trying to make it on my own; this hurt. I mean REALLY hurt. What did it mean for the future of my business? Was I done having barely got out of the gate? It really took the jam out of my donut so to speak.
Then more questions followed. Just who was this and how had my service failed them?
On further inspection it became apparent that I had no idea who this person was. They had never been in my gym, I'd never coached them and as far as I know, never engaged with them on any level at any time. But here it was, their damning indictment of my fledging business laid out for all to see. Would it go viral and shut me down forever?
I went on to reflect that maybe they just wanted to lay out their distaste of my chosen profession or perhaps I didn't offer a service they valued. When I responded and asked for clarification I was met with deafening silence. THAT's when I realised that I was likely playing into their hands and playing their game. I had been duped.
I spent a good 48-72 hours dwelling on that one unfathomable act of attempted sabotage before I realised how wasteful that was in terms of time and energy. Like my dude Henry Rollins once said; "If someone hands you a pile of horse shit, you don't have to take it."
I now know that EVERY interaction on social media as a business is now fair game for trolls. We all know that you can't please anyone and that fact and opinion are often no longer discernible. Tone can be interpreted whilst context and due process are apparent luxuries. Distaste, disagreement and condemnation can be expressed IMMEDIATELY without mercy, temperance or most importantly; critical thought.
But why is it so prevalent? Why are so many people so quick to tap on the keyboard? I liken it to road rage. There are almost no consequences unless it goes HORRIBLY wrong. In one sense, vehicles crash and people get hurt or killed. In the other, some poor kid gets bullied enough to commit self harm or suicide or a career or business might be destroyed. But in MOST cases, both social media trolling and road rage just result in an unnecessary and unpleasant exchange between two people who until that moment had no impact on each other and will probably never again. There's just no point.
Neither would likely happen if they were physically stood in front of each other. In fact they would probably be polite and offer a 'good morning' and hold the door open. Because we have social boundaries and the very real threat of an IMMEDIATE consequence dispensed by the opposing party. Being encased in a ton of metal or sat anonymously behind a keyboard gives people courage they do not otherwise possess. It's almost as if their base levels of respect and decency just get turned off.
I honestly believe that far too many people don't know what it's like to be punched in the face.
Enter my second troll.
"Deadlifting is lifter. Just no. So whoever trained him. Have a word with yourself and him." - The Midnight FaceBook Caller
Now, the irony of the next few paragraphs is not lost upon me. I'm going to express my opinion and poke a little fun at someone else's expense from the warmth and comfort of my office chair (what an asshole hypocrite eh?). However, I assume that if you've read this far that you may actually be interested in my opinion and that it may even resonate with you. In fact, you came here of your own free will and you can exercise that privilege at any point. But also, in tribute to our forgotten best social etiquette training arenas, the school playground, I boldly suggest that they started it first, so I can choose to have some fun with it. The insightful and beautifully crafted comment you can see above was offered in response to a video I had posted. The video in question wasn't a sales pitch or call to action. It was celebrating a successful training block where one of my lifters was just crushing it and making solid progress. I had deemed it worthy of celebrating. Having seen the post, our commenter was suitably aggravated by it that they decided against simply moving on and couldn't contain the need to impose something of themselves. It's a free country after all.
You may have noted that proclamation or assertion makes little sense so let's do the author the favour of assuming that they don't like the deadlift for...reasons I guess.
It had admittedly been a while since my first troll strike so it took me a few seconds before getting on with my life. But in those few seconds, my mind did run the gambit of a few questions:
Do I know this person?
What's their problem?
Why are they posting at midnight on a Saturday/Why am I reading this at midnight on a Saturday?
What do they think their actions will achieve?
You may safely assume that the answer to questions 1 & 2 was swiftly attained as "no". Then I felt a fleeting moment of sympathy for us both that my lifter's success and my coaching practice was a priority in both our thoughts at such an hour on the weekend. But question 4 lingered for a moment more than the rest.
What did they hope to achieve? I still don't know quite what they were hoping to articulate but they were clearly attempting to assert some opinion and authority over me. Did they expect me to bow in shock and awe to their insightful decree? To suddenly apostatise my certification, studies, experience and critical thinking as a result of their own tightly held belief? Maybe to expose me to the world as some kind of fraud? My curmudgeonly and cynical gut feeling is that they simply did it to make themselves feel something; to malign another person in the pursuit of fleeting self-gratification at their expense. They could have harrumphed and moved on but I imagine I'll never really know and truthfully, I've learned not to care.
That's not to say that I know all the answers in my profession. No-one does or ever will. But it is still my PROFESSION and I'll go where my learning and experience take me. My opinion and stance on a whole bunch of topics has changed over the years because I'm getting better at keeping an open mind.
Debate is welcomed so that we can learn, exchange ideas, exercise our brains and come to conclusions. I'm not an academic nor well-practiced in debate; a poorly conceived but well delivered falsehood could trip me up in short order and I'll end up kicking myself the next day when I realise what just happened. But there is a time and there are places for that and please bring your reasons with you. If you're so impassioned, I'm sure there's an online forum somewhere that can help confirm your bias and you can find solace in likeminded people there. I'll keep on helping people get stronger as best I can.
So "No" my midnight caller troll and 1-star review friends, you have not swayed me, exposed me, humbled me or any such thing.
If more people would just adhere to the modern classic; "If you don't like it, just change the channel" I think we'd all get along a lot better too.
"Have you tried caring less?" - BLOC Coach and Empath Mike 'IDGAF' Burgos; circa sometime, somewhere swampy
As I've gotten older, I've started to value certain things more. Like birdsong (yep; seriously), being strong (Duh), good coffee, red wine, hot running water, clean clothes, sitting in the sunshine, digging out the old music I used to love, walking the dog and not meeting a single soul, and watching as my girls develop their own unique sense of humour. Genuine social interactions are also one of them as is being charitable to those not as lucky as me. I think I can sum that up as 'caring more'. But thanks to the sage advice of my dude Mike B and a mortal dose of experience, I've also learned to care LESS about a whole bunch of stuff that make life less fun.
You'll have your own values that are worth defending to the hilt with every fibre of your being. You will have people whose opinion on certain matters will mean a LOT to you. There's a good chance you'll never even have met them. But let's face it; that just a tiny fraction of the global population. And I'm going to suggest that most of the world's population (on the individual level anyway) will disagree with you on a whole bunch of topics but will still have absolutely zero impact on your life and vice versa. Perhaps there will be fleeting connections here or there, for better or for worse.
Not every disagreement needs to be a confrontation. I'm sure we all torture ourselves thinking about missed or squandered opportunities, the 'ifs', the 'whys', moments of weakness, loss or anguish and the mistakes we've made. We're already suffering by our own hands so why go looking for trouble on a whim?
Like I said, the privilege of expressing your own free will means that you can choose who or what is worth expending your limited resources on. If it's important enough to you; then you can go full Big Billy Goat Gruff mode. But, if it isn't, you can still choose to go on the offensive but deep down it would be an empty victory at best and a cancerous wound if it doesn't go your way. Caring less about things that don't matter to you and just moving on is a useful skill I've been learning; and it makes life better.
Perhaps, the core of the issue is the simple truth that our time on this planet is finite and why on earth should we let someone else ruin it for us? And why would we seek to ruin it for someone else?
And to the last smidgeon of irony. Yep, two little, teeny-tiny troll incidents compelled me to write this blog despite my protestations on how much I don't care. So I must have cared at least a little right? I agree AND I'm probably of guilty of it too (what a hypocritical asshole part 2), but this is the extent of it. And now that it's on 'paper' and out in the world, I have committed to caring LESS and doing better.
"and after that he went up to the hillside. There the billy goats got so fat they were scarcely able to walk home again."
