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That Self-Righteous, Combative, S**t Stirring Troll on Social Media—May Be You

I’m a people watcher.

I particularly enjoy finding out what makes them tick under pressure; how they respond to adversity, how they navigate conflict, how they manage dissension. Social media provides a perpetual smorgasbord of such public warfare.

Most of the time I consider myself a pretty perceptive soul, and though I can glean a great deal from other’s actions (as with most people), when it comes to looking in the mirror I suddenly find myself tragically farsighted; unable to clearly assess my own heart in the thick of the fight.

It’s funny how that works isn’t it; our inability to own anything distasteful or unpleasant as we attack and defend, stick and move, comment and rebut? In most of our daily timeline war narratives, we don’t ever cast ourselves as the villain. That’s a role we save exclusively for the other guy or the other side; for those we’ve determined are coming against us, preventing our progress, derailing our righteous movement in the world.

We know without a doubt that jerks and a-holes and trolls abound in cyberspace—and yet magically somehow we never consider ourselves among them.

That’s because despite claims to the contrary, we all normally operate within the same fixed set of givens: our cause is just, our motives are pure, our tactics justifiable. This helps tremendously when we go to battle because it allows us to do so without considering the collateral damage and without carrying culpability for bad behavior. With Right always on our side, we can do all manner of destruction and toss all the verbal grenades we want, because Internet War is HellSnap judgments, uninformed stereotyping, and armchair psychoanalysis are all fair game from our lofty moral perch behind the keyboard.

In fact, most of us imagine ourselves so exceptionally pure that it no longer occurs to us that we may actually be the problem in any given exchange. We’re so convinced of the other’s fatal flaws, that we can’t fathom our own. Yet we so need to if we want to have integrity online and create a legacy worthy leaving.

Sometimes we can gain this necessary insight from the perspective of others, even those who comprise our opposition, but the real wisdom needs to come from time alone and offline; in the still and the quiet where likes can’t inflate our egos and nasty retorts can tear them apart. There, disconnected from the crowd we can find the clear, uncluttered white space to inventory our hearts and be honest with both our motives and our methods.

On any given day you may indeed be a valiant, tireless fighter on the side of virtue—or you may just be a combative jerk addicted to the fight for fighting’s sake. Only you can really figure that out and only you can course correct accordingly. Your ability to argue and your eloquence and your wit can often mask internal sickness for a time, but eventually you get found out and whatever good you originally set out to do is compromised and discredited by a toxic attitude and suspect agenda. 

Use caution.
Pause frequently.
Check your motives.

Pride and self-righteousness are close neighbors. Yes speak into injustice, of course champion the causes that stir your soul, and do be bold where you are convicted to be, but fight not to be poisoned by the fight. Never take too long before logging off, looking inside, and making sure your why is still worthy and that your how does it justice.

Friends, out there in the social media battlefields there’s a razor-thin line between noble agent of change, and divisive s**t stirrer.

As much as you are able, choose to remain the former.

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