Rule No. 1.
Not to be a kill-joy, but rule no. 1 in any online community is this: Do not feed the trolls.
They crawl out of the woodwork, these trolls, to say things intended only to stir up trouble. They want you to get angry. They want you to fly off the handle. They love it when you go off in a high dudgeon at great length and with furious vituperation. They don’t care what you say, how clearly you hold the moral high ground, how you raze their pathetic arguments to the foundations and salt the very earth they stand on. They just know if they say something outrageous, they’ll get attention, and when the current furor dies down, they’ll just say something outrageous again. Moreso, maybe. Try to top themselves. (You remember your T.A. for Tots? It’s a classic case of confusing Warm Fuzzies and Cold Pricklies. If the PC Police didn’t exist, they’d have to invent them—wait a minute—)
So: in case you hadn’t figured it out: Ben Shapiro is a stone-cold troll. —For fuck’s sake, Jerry Falwell apologized for saying this shit. (Whether he really meant it in his heart is between him and his God and immaterial to the matter at hand.)
It’s become hip in certain circles to refer to “the Virgin Ben” when dealing with Shapiro—mostly because of how he spun this lifestyle squib. —This is a classic case of feeding the troll. It’s not so much red meat as the Goblin Queen’s appropriately righteous indignation, but running gags like “the Virgin Ben” will feed his persecution complex and give him enough of a crusader’s high to keep him going for weeks on end. (Why, if he’s lucky enough, maybe he’ll break out of the blogosphere and get his own Working For Change profile.)
Of course: online, if you don’t feed the trolls, they eventually go away. Not entirely—we will always have trolls with us—but it’s possible to maintain a civil discourse over and around them, through them and past them; if you can’t resist, if you give in to temptation and the troll gets what the troll wants, well. You can always ban IP numbers.
Out here in the real world, if you don’t feed the trolls, the Heritage Foundation will still give them columns.
Life is unfair. Dammit.
Do the good work. Do the substantive work. Speak truth to power and all that jazz; turn over what rocks you can and tell everyone what you find there. Take responsibility for your news and hold accountable the official voices who are supposed to bring it to you. When the chattering classes swallow unquestioned the latest bile from entertainers like Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, demand better. (Because trolls who get others to agree with them are the most dangerous trolls of all.) But Ben Shapiro? The Virgin Ben? Come on.
I mean, it’s like kicking a puppy. You know?
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Thanks a lot, Kip. Now I can't get that ridiculous *Dragnet* movie out of my head. :p
It's not me you need to blame, Amy; I didn't coin it. Maybe Atrios, maybe Mr. Capozzola, but not me. (Anyone know who started the Virgin Ben riff? I found several examples, but did not bother to date them.)
Also, congrats: you actually had me stumped for almost two minutes. Dragnet '87. Jesus. I'd forgotten that flick.
I'd forgotten it, too. Misery loves company, you know. Seriously, I agree the guy's a dumsnut, but I also agree that it's cheap to hurl the "v" about as an insult. I didn't like to hear it as an insult when I was still a virgin myself (well past what the arbiters of hipness would consider the appropriate age, of course... I can't blame God, either). OTOH, yesterday I got called a "bitter old maid" by a troll, which was actually amusing, particularly since said troll got banned from said online BB today. :D
Also, it's a sad commentary that the media machine that took great pains to asure us "post 911" that "irony is dead," or whatever is now flogging a new "un-ironic" Dragnet TV series, don't you think ? At least it looked about as ironic and humorous as a root canal in the preview I saw last week. N.O.T.A. have mercy.
Apparently, "the Virgin Ben" is thanks to TBogg, or so sayeth the Rittenhouse Review. Who's continuing the joke...
I saw somebody threw a masturbation joke into the mix, too. Nice. I suppose either is better than Yo-Mama jokes, but not by very much.