Hypocrite Trolls

Remember last week?

It turns out that Roger Ebert was not a meanie.

Instead, someone was even more low and left a comment in Mr. Ebert's name that was trollish, thereby casting Mr. Ebert in a bad light. And that's something else that I didn't include in my post on Friday about various possibilities of Trolldom.

And this scenario shouldn't have slipped my mind. In fact, it was only a few weeks ago that one of my friends left his Facebook account open at school and later discovered that his classmates had used his account to post "indecent content" and change his sexual orientation (among other things).

That is all moderately legitimate fun with little lasting damage (overall). It's a prank, but it's not exactly malicious.

But using someone else's name/identity as a cover for your bile is just plain nasty.

That's the worse application of hypocrisy out there. That is purposefully lying about who you are so you can damage others under the name of someone else.


Hypocrite

That's disgusting and very destructive in this online world where reputation is one of the only things we have available to us. We are again far too removed from those with whom we interact to be able to contact them and get at the truth.

It's almost like we're back to an age when transportation was miserably slow and people stayed within their little areas. Today we stay in our houses and cubicles and only catch rumors of those around the globe with whom we interact and work.

There is little chance of face time with many of these people.

And so, much like The Crucible, we have little more than our good names.

Don't be a hypocrite.

~Luke Holzmann
Filmmaker, Writer, Expectant Father

P.S. ...and perhaps this is another reason Anonymous comments can be so bothersome: We can't gauge where the person is coming from, and we can't tell how honest they are being with us.