"Don't poke the crazy"

One of the online communities I belong to has a saying - poking the crazy - that is used to describe a situation where someone deliberately posts something that will cause opinionated people to come out of the woodwork and voice their (generally emotionally held, not well informed, and not well supported by evidence) positions. On one of the sub-boards someone asked the other day, "Should I 'poke the crazy'" and provided a link to something that was intended as irony, but which could possibly be interpreted as serious by a particular type of person, and upset them. (The general consensus was, "no").

I've kind of adopted the term. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm a tiny bit uncomfortable with the use of the word "crazy" as I've had relatives with mental-health issues. But really, I tend to think of "crazy" not as a derogative (huh, firefox's spell checker doesn't know that one) term for someone who has mental health problems, as I think of it as someone who needs to make Drama a daily part of their life, or someone who flies off the handle easily.

I've also found that "poking the crazy," at least in my life, seems to happen inadvertently - I don't like the response that comes from the pokage, so I avoid things that poke it. (Which is why I stopped talking politics in my day to day life.)

An example: I happened to mention, early in my career, that on SOME issues SOME of my political leanings tended to be more little-l libertarian than anything.

Well, you might have thought I said, "I like to pick up fieldmice and bop them on the heads" from the response I got. Good grief.

(And yeah, I realize that some big-L libertarians - at least some of the ones I've seen - tend to be the Crazy that gets poked. I'm not like that, honest. I just prefer that the government not tell me what I can and cannot do in the privacy of my own home, provided I'm not hurting anyone more defenseless than I am. And I don't like city councils that do things like regulate what color one's shutters can be, or how early on the night before trash-day it's OK to put out the cans...seriously, in my parents' town, a person can be fined for putting them out before 6 pm on the day before trash day.)

In everyday life, sometimes you Poke the Crazy. When it happens to me, it's unintended, and I usually back slowly away from the conversation if I can. (I once had a woman start telling me about the sexual abuse she suffered as a child. I still cannot figure out what in our previous conversation told her that it was OK to share that then.)

Online boards...it can happen there too. One thing I've noticed - and this is sort of an observation about how some people write online - is that The Crazy often comes without capitals and punctuation:

so people write like this when they tell you all the things that bother them and they dont bother to put in stops or rests like commas or periods and whenever they use the pronoun i they dont capitalize it they just use it as i and that kind of thing kind of bugs me to be honest because to me it feels like an affectation that someone is using but maybe i read too much poetry written in the 1960s.

Or, it's in ALL CAPS AND IT SOUNDS LIKE THE PERSON IS SHOUTING AT YOU AND I DON"T KNOW BUT I THINK SOME PEOPLE HAVE THE IDEA THAT ALL CAPS TELLS EVERYONE AROUND THEM THAT "THIS IS SERIOUS THREAD" WHEN REALLY PEOPLE WHO HAVE BEEN ONLINE LONGER TEND TO INTERPRET ALL CAPS AS "THIS PERSON DOESN'T KNOW WHAT HE OR SHE IS TALKING ABOUT AND THEY HAVE BEEN POKED INTO SHARING THEIR DRAMA"

One thing I was told - back in the Usenet days (wow, Usenet was kind of the Wild West now that I think about it) - was that when you joined a discussion group, you "lurked" for a month. Didn't post to threads, didn't start new topics. You just read. Kept your eyes open, so to speak, and your mouth closed. You learned the tone of the board, what its conventions were, and then, after you'd picked them up, you posted.

Oh, chances were you'd still get flamed as a newbie, but at least you could take comfort in the fact that you didn't really deserve it because you didn't commit any of the unforgivable sins like TYPING IN ALL CAPS or using some catchphrase that wasn't used on the board.

(And if you had an aol.com address, you'd probably get flamed anyway, that seemed to be what I saw, but whatever.)

But one thing I've noticed with online bulletin boards is that people don't seem to do this any more. Or, people decide that THEIR OPINION IS SO IMPORTANT AND ZOMG I MUST SAVE THESE PEOPEL FROM THEMSELVES (and yes, that variant spelling of people, along with TEH for the, is a common factor), that they don't bother to pull back.

It's kind of like the person with the hobbyhorse at the meeting. For example: there is one person on a campus who really, really wants "spousal benefits" extended to live-in partners (of either gender). So every time there's a meeting, if the word "family" comes up, this person has to jump in with their prepared speech about how it is not FAIR that the (comparatively minor) spousal benefits are not extended to him and his live-in girlfriend. (And I'm sitting there thinking, "And you choose not to get the piece of paper why?" Oh, I realize that's insensitive but I think it's insensitive of him to waste my time at the meeting.)

In a way, it's kind of like a really bad drinking game, only instead of taking a shot when the buzzword comes up, you launch into a tirade.

It seems that, in online communities at least, there are certain things that Bring the Crazy. Politics, of course, does it. (On the boards I read, surprisingly enough, religion usually does not, unless someone who had a really bad experience with religion growing up happens to show up and decides to tell all the Christians and Jews how they're deluded fools to believe in the Magic Sky Person and oh, they probably abuse their children, too).

Mentioning "vaccinations" can do it. The anti-vaccination crowd, while small, can be pretty rabid. (Yes, snark intended there.)

Mentioning any issue having to do with frugality brings it - brings the people who apparently live in a box with a computer and an extension cord and who SAVE MONEY BY BUYING OUTDATED FOOD AT THE DEPOT!

Mentioning any environmental issue immediately brings out the holier than thou types who are, as we speak, generating the electricity to power their computer by riding a stationary bike, and why aren't the rest of use parasites on Mother Gaia doing the same?

Threads talking about how a person had to deal with someone who was a mean jerk can also bring it - on one board I read, there is at least one person who is apparently has a certain misplaced sympathy for autism and Asperger's patients and who will immediately jump in and say that the person complaining about the bad treatment is unjustified, because "maybe that other person has Asperger's!" Um. I've known a person who was high-functioning Aspergers. I've observed autistic children. In the situations where someone is high-functioning, one of the things they want to do (at least in my limited experience) is learn the social conventions that the rest of us have internalized. There is a clear difference between having Asperger's and being an ass, and sometimes people just are asses.

Oh, and Wal-Mart brings it. Someone mentions wal-mart, and immediately the DON"T EVER SHOP THERE THEY MISTREAT THEIR EMPLOYEES AND ARE GOING TO FORCE THEM TO VOTE FOR MCCAIN IN THE UPCOMING ELECTION!!!11!!! people come out. And then the OH YEAH BUT I LIVE 300 MILES FROM THE NEXT NEAREST STORE people come out. And then the BUT WHAT YOU NEED TO DO THEN IS START A FOOD CO OP IN YOUR TOWN SO YOU CAN AVOID THE EVIL WAL MART come out.

Actually, given a large enough diverse enough group of people, ANYTHING can bring it. I've actually seen something like a fight break out online over whether or not it is OK to use acrylic yarn. I'm serious. The amount of snark thrown about was amazing.

In the right mood, it can be kind of entertaining, in the "sit back, make some popcorn, and crack open a soda" kind of way. But I'm rarely in the right mood for that; I tend to find it somewhat distressing. In my bleakest moods it makes me wonder if we are not becoming increasingly unable to understand, empathize, and listen to each other. Seriously - some day might we have a civil war between people who think it's OK to shop at big-box stores, and people who think it's evil (even if your other option is, literally, a couple hundred miles away).

It's like everyone is in their own little echo chamber, and instead of opening the door to hear what other people are saying, they're so content hearing their opinions in their own voices, that they don't want to hear any other opinions or voices.