A LITTLE STORY ABOUT ELAN AND DIANE …
Dec. 11th, 2013 11:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogRegarding the Elan Gale/Diane Twitter hoax:
This is ancient history in webtime, I know. But I was bogged down in work, family time and travel back when the story broke, and I’ve only just gotten a breather to have time to type something about it.
When the original story was making the rounds on Facebook (before we found out it was mainly fictional) I did not post it or forward it – not because I suspected it was fake (which I didn’t), but because I’m not really big on (1) fucking with people, or (2) fucking with people in a widely public and viral environment like (say) Twitter.
Yes, I understand a lot of people act like jerks, and I understand the desire to put jerks in their place, or at least fuck with them to make their day as miserable as they’re making yrs. We run across people like that all the time, and most of us lack the courage to confront them, or the wit to do it in a perfect and entertaining way.
That’s probably why the Gale/Diane story went viral – we’ve all had that fantasy of giving an obnoxious person their just desserts, even if we have to resort to writing open letters on Facebook to The Jerk In Traffic Who Doesn’t Know What Turn Signals Are For or The Coffee Monkey Who Copped An Attitude that the intended recipient will never actually see. Which doesn’t matter because they’re usually written for venting purposes anyway. That’s fine. I do it too.
I also get that this is basically how society works – when people act anti-socially, corrective methods are applied to let those people know it’s not okay to act like that.
The question then becomes, “What corrective methods are themselves acceptable?”
And I know it’s because I am old and feeble now – 15 years ago I probably would have approved of Gale’s tactics – but I’m not really convinced the answer is: “Withering sarcasm and advising the person to eat a dick”.
This post on Grantland does a decent job of outlining the contradiction of putting a jerk in their place by acting like a jerk – especially when the person acting like a jerk could be doing so for legitimate reasons. Diane could have been someone who was having a really bad week, her life was falling apart, and the delayed flight was just the last straw and she just snapped. It happens. Instead of bothering to find out, Gale responded by advising her to have a drink, shut the fuck up and eat a dick. Which, if she really were having a bad time, would have been of no help whatsoever. Humiliating her on Twitter would arguably be even less helpful.
Obviously this is academic, as there either was no Diane, or there was one but Gale didn’t actually swap notes with her. But for awhile, everyone assumed she was real, and thought this was funny and a great way to handle the situation.
I thought it was kind of mean, not to mention uncool, to not only needlessly fuck with her, but also broadcast the whole thing online. Because how would YOU feel?
I’m not saying jerks should be left alone to get on being jerks and we should just suffer them. I’m saying that there’s a difference between someone who knows they’re acting like a jerk and doesn’t care, and someone who has had it and is just taking it out on people because they’re convenient targets of frustration. I’m saying that we only had Elan Gale’s word for it that Diane fit in the former category. And I’m saying that even if Diane was real, there are better ways to handle the situation than making an online spectacle of her and telling her to eat a dick. It’s not a very cool thing to do. Understandable, perhaps. But not very cool.
But what do I know? I’m the guy who thinks the People Of Wal-mart site is a mean-spirited form of bullying as entertainment. The popularity of Gale’s actions (at least when everyone thought it was real) appear to be an endorsement of them, so clearly I’m the one who’s out of step with the times.
But hey, that’s been true since kindergarten. So I’m used to it by now.
Don’t be a dick,
This is dF
This is ancient history in webtime, I know. But I was bogged down in work, family time and travel back when the story broke, and I’ve only just gotten a breather to have time to type something about it.
When the original story was making the rounds on Facebook (before we found out it was mainly fictional) I did not post it or forward it – not because I suspected it was fake (which I didn’t), but because I’m not really big on (1) fucking with people, or (2) fucking with people in a widely public and viral environment like (say) Twitter.
Yes, I understand a lot of people act like jerks, and I understand the desire to put jerks in their place, or at least fuck with them to make their day as miserable as they’re making yrs. We run across people like that all the time, and most of us lack the courage to confront them, or the wit to do it in a perfect and entertaining way.
That’s probably why the Gale/Diane story went viral – we’ve all had that fantasy of giving an obnoxious person their just desserts, even if we have to resort to writing open letters on Facebook to The Jerk In Traffic Who Doesn’t Know What Turn Signals Are For or The Coffee Monkey Who Copped An Attitude that the intended recipient will never actually see. Which doesn’t matter because they’re usually written for venting purposes anyway. That’s fine. I do it too.
I also get that this is basically how society works – when people act anti-socially, corrective methods are applied to let those people know it’s not okay to act like that.
The question then becomes, “What corrective methods are themselves acceptable?”
And I know it’s because I am old and feeble now – 15 years ago I probably would have approved of Gale’s tactics – but I’m not really convinced the answer is: “Withering sarcasm and advising the person to eat a dick”.
This post on Grantland does a decent job of outlining the contradiction of putting a jerk in their place by acting like a jerk – especially when the person acting like a jerk could be doing so for legitimate reasons. Diane could have been someone who was having a really bad week, her life was falling apart, and the delayed flight was just the last straw and she just snapped. It happens. Instead of bothering to find out, Gale responded by advising her to have a drink, shut the fuck up and eat a dick. Which, if she really were having a bad time, would have been of no help whatsoever. Humiliating her on Twitter would arguably be even less helpful.
Obviously this is academic, as there either was no Diane, or there was one but Gale didn’t actually swap notes with her. But for awhile, everyone assumed she was real, and thought this was funny and a great way to handle the situation.
I thought it was kind of mean, not to mention uncool, to not only needlessly fuck with her, but also broadcast the whole thing online. Because how would YOU feel?
I’m not saying jerks should be left alone to get on being jerks and we should just suffer them. I’m saying that there’s a difference between someone who knows they’re acting like a jerk and doesn’t care, and someone who has had it and is just taking it out on people because they’re convenient targets of frustration. I’m saying that we only had Elan Gale’s word for it that Diane fit in the former category. And I’m saying that even if Diane was real, there are better ways to handle the situation than making an online spectacle of her and telling her to eat a dick. It’s not a very cool thing to do. Understandable, perhaps. But not very cool.
But what do I know? I’m the guy who thinks the People Of Wal-mart site is a mean-spirited form of bullying as entertainment. The popularity of Gale’s actions (at least when everyone thought it was real) appear to be an endorsement of them, so clearly I’m the one who’s out of step with the times.
But hey, that’s been true since kindergarten. So I’m used to it by now.
Don’t be a dick,
This is dF
