September 12, 2007

Another Part Of The Garden: Garden Forums

Into most gardeners’ lives these days, a gardening forum or two must fall. Chatting online amongst a group of people who share a fondness or outright love of gardening, is as common in these Internet days as was the Saturday afternoon garden clubs of old – sans the white gloves, wide-brimmed straw hats, pearls and teacups. In the online garden ‘clubs’ of today, testosterone accounts for equal participation and baseball caps or no caps are more the attire. Dirty fingernails belie not only lack of white gloves but no gloves at all; bandanas adorn necks instead of pearls; and the drink of choice usually depends upon just how much gardening that particular gardener intends to accomplish the day after. (Hiccup!) Cyber ‘clubbers’ are more likely plunked in front of their computers at all hours of the day or night donned in p.j.s or nightgowns, shorts and t-shirts, overalls or garden-soiled jeans or as bare as a freshly cleared field of corn with perhaps two or three niblets remaining visible to the very naked eye.

While many forum members choose to share their life history along with their gardening history, others choose to protect their personal anonymity and reveal just enough of their lives outside the garden to bridge the gap between total alienation and a certain level of guarded friendship. Still others – rarely - will form deep and abiding friendships that generously spill over into real lives off line for years and years.

The genesis of the world-wide web conceived and birthed instantaneous (depending on your ISP), direct and convenient access to the world outside our door, outside out country and outside our mind. The Internet plied the fertile ground of a basic human need: The need to communicate with our fellow human beings – with the bonus feature of anonymity….and Lo! Forums Were Begat! And yea, they spread unto the globe sending forth messages of love, camaraderie, commiseration, knowledge and some of the vilest behavior imaginable…and unimaginable.

We had passed the pearly gates of Bill, peered through the forbidden Windows and ate of the Apple. We were doomed. But we were curious and still hungry after that measly little apple. We ignored the black cannonballs with their lit fuses threatening us with fatal numerical errors. Although I’ve yet to see a 666, it’s just a matter of time before a way is devised to spin our heads around and spew pea soup on our screens as we contemplate the death of both our soft and hard ware. We survived the Hounds of Hellish HTML; walked away from more crashes than Evil Kenevil and with the safe-sex equivalent to STDs, we slipped into our Norton and Symantec prophylactics hoping to shield us from any CTVs (computer transmitted viruses). Yet no java scripted stones of computer commandments nor St. Steven’s iBook of Jobs could have prepared us for the Damien of Forums: The Troll and his demonic mission to divide and conquer.
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The plethora of divergent personalities populating forums who are merely out for a pleasant weave through a new garden thread, provides a veritable smorgasbord of prey upon which a Troll can feast. Divisiveness is an easy accomplishment for the well-armored Troll. Conquering takes a bit longer depending on the tenacity of the Troll and the degree of vulnerability amongst trusting souls or the denial by others of the Troll’s capacity to create unrelenting havoc. His deviant progress, however, can be thwarted or halted outright if more members are as equally tenacious as the Troll to ensure his departure, and if they are wise to the futility of silence when battling the Troll for the hearts, minds – and mostly – the time and tried patience all forum family members. New and old.

In an atmosphere where most forum members just want to be heard, recognized and validated, a simple response from another member usually achieves that affirmation. A door is then opened for the single most important guest: The Dialog. But, any open-door dialog also invites the unwelcome Troll. Once the troll has passed the threshold, can Discourse be far behind? Too many guests and not enough food to go around. Someone has to go hungry. Usually it’s the weakest of the herd, the newest members, who are culled first by The Troll. Unwary of their new surroundings or the ways of the Internet Trolls, the 'fresh meat' wanders off into his net of idiotic rambling babbles. Talking in tongues has a different connotation when referring to TrollTalk. Once gorged on the forum souls of departed newbies and having frightened off potential lurking members - now too apprehensive to even enter the Troll’s killing fields - the Troll becomes greedy, more invasive and hungrier now for the morale of stronger members. Reincarnating in different forms, as real demons some times do, the Troll can fool the most wizened members. Some members succumb. They are polite - even kindly - to the disguised Troll. Others will choose the road of least resistance and ignore the Troll in the hopes the evil one will “just go away”, thus making it “all better” so they can once again resume their innocent exchanges.

A word here about forum exchanges: they can be friendly and informative at best; civil mostly; tenuous and circumspect at times; and uncomfortably inhospitable at their worst. Each person perceives different degrees of importance to what they have to contribute. Just as in real life. In real life what we think is important may not at all be important to our neighbor, our spouses, our parents or children or the person next to you at the supermarket checkout line. Sometimes we envision pearls of wisdom being imparted to others or our humor tickling a smile or laughter. Other times we hope our sympathies and empathies are accepted with the sincerity we intended. On other occasions we humbly share lessons we’ve learned through life experience. All these, we think are of importance because they are important to us…and rightly so. Yet, you must admit, that oft times if we heard those same words or thoughts or ‘life experiences’ – in person – from another, some of us couldn’t skulk away from our neighbor fast enough; shut the bedroom door behind our spouse hard enough; turn a deaf ear to our parents often enough; send our child packing to their room sternly enough; or abandon our shopping carts and escape from the supermarket checkout line desperately enough.

Ah, but therein lies the basic difference between sharing what’s important to us - in person with neighbors, family and even that person in the checkout line - and imparting those same personally-important thoughts with distant, faceless strangers on a tiny screen with a constantly blinking cursor awaiting our next potentially incriminating word. Whereas we can always cross back over to our neighbor’s yard, open the door to the bedroom; invite our parents to a quiet dinner (if we’re still fortunate to have them); walk up the stairs to our child’s room; or remain in line to help pack a fellow shopper’s groceries…none of this is possible in an online forum. All is judged by the written word and written words can more often than not be interpreted quite differently in the eye of the beholder than they were intended in the mind's eye of the writer. There is no visual contact, facial expression, hand gestures or intonation of voice in a forum exchange to enhance understanding or intent. In person, your second chance at clarification is enabled by utilizing all your senses. You can listen with ears not deafened by your own prideful opinion and see with eyes broadened and cleared to view the entirety of the picture. You may still walk away from your neighbor, kiss your spouse goodnight, hug your child the next morning or wait patiently in the checkout line while that shopper finishes their thought – and still believe them to be wrong or annoying, but you’ve given them and yourself the opportunity to share, perhaps, the one and only true thing you can and should share: Respect. You’ve let the other person know their words and thoughts and opinions are important. And Respect is one aspect of furthering understanding between individuals that can be duplicated on forums. But, it must be earned. Which brings us back to....

... Troll Central. A Troll's primary rule of engagement is to dismiss and destroy Respect. Muddle the lines of communication between members and encourage even further discourse. Reminding me of an old Twilight Zone episode where everyone on a block began blaming each other and accusing each other of being ‘an alien’ causing all the trouble in the neighborhood. In the end, they turned on each other and destroyed themselves. All the while being observed by true aliens who ultimately declared: “We don’t have to worry about conquering these Earthlings. They’ll destroy themselves”.

Trolls also calculate the strength of the commonly held comparison between forum families and real–life families. Like any real-life family with dysfunctional members, there are nasty and critical relations, meek and mild, outspoken and confident, people pleasers and people haters, jealous, indifferent, callous, cruel, judges and jurors, leaders and followers, sympathizers and empathizers, experienced and novices, wise and the foolish, humorous and humorless, fearsome and feared. Forum families share the same cast of characters - only with many, many more relatives at the forum dinner table. The trunk, branches, stems and roots of a real family tree could never compare to the vast root system of a forum family. The roots of one single forum family can penetrate walls, towns, cities and countries racial, religious, cultural and political barriers. And if there’s a Martian growing a tomato, you can bet that gardening forums’ roots are beaming through gaseous galactic clouds more deadly than any lingering haze of malathion.

On the whole gardening forums in particular have become a place to learn and share, to brag and compliment and just to shoot the breeze when the spirit moves you. If it’s pouring outside or the temperature is something only to be tolerated by that Martian tomato grower, a gardener is logged on. It’s that forum family mentality the Troll must deduce before he begins his harangue. His barrage of insults, curt responses, condescension and culling of the member-herd are carefully gauged before he draws first blood. If he sees a chink in the family’s armor, a breach in their wall of unity for the good of the entire forum family, his chances for dividing and conquering increase. If he succeeds in severing the lines of communication between family members; if in-fighting between ‘relatives’ causes them to lose sight of the single goal of restoring Peace to their 'little family' by vanquishing the Troll through unified solidarity…then the Troll will win. If, however, the family remains united and provides support by proactively urging The One True Mighty Favah of their beloved forums to send his tech crew of archangels to join battle with the Troll and slam the gates behind him… then …and only then can the family get on with their forum lives and enjoy their exchanges once again. Until the next troll slithers across the threshold or shrouds himself in yet another cloak. And he will.

Truly, anything worthwhile is worth fighting for. Silence never wins over evil. ”Your very silence”, as Euripides said,”shows you agree”. To sit in the sidelines and not participate in even the smallest way (that’s why God invented email) and maintain you still “support” the ‘family’; or to fear being splattered with some bile spewed by the Troll as he scatter shoots the entire family and worry the stain can’t be removed from your nice garden togs; to be so fearfully apathetic and as Helen Keller said, ”Science may have found a cure for most evils, but it has not found a remedy for the the worst evil of all: the apathy of human beings”…..to follow that tact and ultimately reap the reward of peace and tranquility [if] and once the Troll has been vanquished, is, to me, hypocritical, parasitical and cowardly.

One of my favorite phrases and mantras, if you will, for refuting apathy and silence when speaking up for a group - a family – speaking up as a group and as a family – is from Martin Luther King, Jr.:
” Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?'. Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?'. Vanity asks the question, 'Is it popular?'. But, conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?'. And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because one's conscience tells one that it is right.”

And what is Right? That is beyond my purview to judge. I don’t judge. I comment and I do what I think is right. I close this with a final quote from Seneca: ”The real compensation of a right action is inherent in having performed it”. In other words, if I feel something is right and I act upon it, there is no compensation, no reward, no gratitude I seek. It is the mere knowledge that I did something - took some action - instead of nothing which is my sole and most fulfilling reward. Does that make me a Better person? Absolutely not. It isn't about Better or Worse or - as I alluded - Right or Wrong. It is about what I perceive as Right for me. And it is that which I will have to live with. And, heck, even Ghandi took some kind of action. Passivity, yes. But passive aggressive action.

In the end, communication still remains the key in gardening forum 'families'. In any family perhaps. If the lines of communication are weakened or compromised by ego or apathy or overt anger, then Trolls just have to sit back and wait for us to devour each other. Like the aliens on that block who just watched ...and waited. Then, our little alleged forum family becomes nothing more than those people standing in that supermarket line who can’t run fast enough to get away from each other.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well said, Linda, and well thought out. I didn't "get" what was going on at OG forums...I am still a little confused, and I am definitely a newbee.

I hope I haven't offended you by posting that I wanted you to stay...it never occured to me that you were looking for other members to "take sides", or defend you, but I can understand why some did.

I have a lot to learn about how this all works, especially how to report "troll" like behavior to the moderators.

I think I need to have more experience on the forums, to gain some discernment.

Thanks for your posts at OG and this site.

Peace, Gail

Linda said...

Gail, there is no possible way I could ever be offended by you or anyone expressing such generous sentiments. Who in their right mind wouldn't want to know they're wanted? Not me.:)

Perhaps it was I who misunderstood. Perhaps it's I who should ask if I offended by interpreting some of the posts I did read as intimating that I was seeking support for 'myself' because that kind of 'needy' tact would so very, very much not be me.

Thanks for reading and commenting, Linda

Anonymous said...

So beautifully said. Your essay is clearly a pouring out of heart and soul, and some of the most passionate writing I have read in a long time. Thank you for your conviction and honesty. It is refreshing.

Linda said...

Thank you, "Anonymous". A lot of it was a bit of automatic writing, since it was a sort of 'pouring out' as you said. While it was a cathartic benefit to me, I fear the people who possibly could have benefited most from some of what I wrote, either weren't interested enough to read or didn't think a "troll encounter" would ever happen again on their watch or felt I was too critical of people who recognize a problem, yet opt to turn a blind eye rather than deal with it. Ah....that's life. Both in reality and on forums. :)

Anonymous said...

It's obvious a lot of thought went into this piece, Linda. The serious parts about the trolls and all are very true and annoying for people visiting forums. I always think these troll people are mentally disturbed so I hate to confront them. But I don't think they should be allowed to make posts. That's why I usually only belong to forums where the moderators take more action against them.

Have to also say your history of the internet was really funny. Especially the Gates Of Bill. Hah-hah!
Sue

Anonymous said...

Read this and really identified. Followed your sidebar links to organic gardening forums and lurked a bit. Saw some posts think you wrote and saw this nutjob who you guys dealing with. Looks like the same wacko pain in the ass that's on lots of other gardening forums I go to. He uses lots of other names but we all know he is the same guy. This guy is a real psycho. I hope you never got any flack from him. Trolls are like cockaroaches. They don't like to be exposed or have light put on them. Only difference is roaches run and trolls don't. This guy needs a net. W.

Anonymous said...

I hate to prolong this troll talk and unfortunately it takes away from your lovely writing and apt description of gardening forums. However, in my profession I've communicated with many people who fit the profile of what is commonly referred to as: A Troll. They are usually lonely, without any social life or contacts, fearful of women (most of them being males), have enormous inferiority complexes and can be so debilitated by their inability to civilly interact, most require medical treatment or eventual hospitalization.

On some occasions, their inhibitions can react in a bi-polar fashion, in that they will accelerate from extremely low to excessive combative highs. It's while in these high states, they can become quite dangerous.

Not that it was asked for, but my professional advice is to avoid faceless communication such as the Internet provides with these people. Without exactly knowing who you are dealing with, and the level of psychotic behavior, you could find yourself in a very tenuous situation. Liz

Anonymous said...

The comment above was letting this guy off too easy. As member of a forum you visit I think both know he is sick. I think it is a mistake also to think trolls in general are really very smart and just pretending to be stupid. In this particular case on the forum I go to, this guy isn't pretending. It is just the oppositie for him. He is really stupid and pretending to be smart. OGer

Unknown said...

Hi - I run a gardening forum, and I'm a fan of your blog and wanted to reach out via email but couldn't find contact information for you on the site. Could you drop me a line at lspichkin@
gmail.com? Thanks!