Why being an internet troll isn't so terrible
Yesterday, I had a Twitter argument about Akbar.
Naturally, a few felt it necessary to conjecture that my knowledge of Akbar must stem from a school textbook or a Bollywood movie.
Equally naturally, I pointed these gentlemen towards my forthcoming book on royal weddings in lndia, which covers Akbar's matrimonial alliances and his attitude towards polygyny, sati, child marriage and widow remarriage.
As a museum curator engaged particularly with vernacular and peripheral histories of India, I still find Akbar to be a brilliant colossus of a man, straddling his age with questing, groping, fundamentally changing belief.
Few of us, whether royal or common, powerful or weak, are brave enough to challenge our own beliefs, and Akbar did so with epoch-changing impact.
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| Union minister Smriti Irani has been subjected to the grossest sexist abuse on social media. |
But this piece isn't about Akbar. It is not even about the anachronistic standards to which he is being held by the hardliners who would strip India and Indianness to some impossible ideal of pure dharmic authenticity.
This piece is instead about the nature of internet debate. More specifically, it is about the troll, whether starving, well-fed, attention-seeking or just chillin'.
Now, while I was engaged in the above debate, attempting to answer even the most condescending sexist reply with what l thought was reasoned argument, a Twitter friend messaged me to say that "I shouldn't feed the trolls".
I replied saying that l felt it was right to correct them when, in this instance, I did know better (and there was the not so obscure Persian text to prove my point).
The Akbari debate ended, as Twitter debates always does, by me having to go away to attend to real life.
Realisation dawned, late as always, that debates on Twitter aren't there to be won. Social media exists so that we can put out our points of view, disagree with others, learn from them, rebut them in a democratic way. Not since the communal tribal firepit of our hominid ancestors has discourse been so open and non-heirarchical.
But we all forget the glorious beauty of this phenomenon. So intent are we in our kindergarten earnestness to win, to side with our ideological cliques, to ostracise others with opinions different from our own.
So keen to brand their opinions as trolling, sub-human, not worthy of consideration.
I do this. Despite my best intentions, my tone becomes snide and cutting. I lacerate with words, thinking myself witty.
Others do it too. Those I have termed "gliberals" - people who parrot liberal ideas from a different social setting without having an iota of liberality in the principles by which they judge opinion. They are, of course, the quickest to brand any form of counter-argument as trolling.
So normalised is this language that leading opinion leaders from the right-wing are unproblematically referred to as trolls within the internal language of this gliberal discourse. It does not trouble this set that most of those thus abused are women.
No one from the gliberal set stands up for these women, and no one sees the obscene hypocrisy of those who deem themselves victims of trolling when they similarly abuse others.
Union minister Smriti Irani, who has been subjected to the grossest sexist abuse on social media, called out this hypocrisy in her now famous interview with the controversial journalist Barkha Dutt.
So is it perhaps an inevitability that, despite our best intentions, we will all be trolls in some form or another on social media? Is this, as it were, the nature of the internet beast?
I am inclined to believe that it is so. I am also inclined to believe that being a troll isn't so terrible. Being a sexist, racist, abuser who threatens violence is, of course, a very bad thing. But if to troll means to respectfully, or not so respectfully, disagree with another then we should embrace our troll natures.
Because who amongst us hasn't had that kind of engagement with others on social media?
Oh, right. Those "celebrities" who only follow people they already know and whose recycled opinions they are probably already familiar with. Those opposed to any form of newness. Those Who like the curated familiar. Who engage only with people,(people they know), not ideas. (If you're not a fellow famous actor, politician or editor, nothing you write can possibly be useful.) Or those who follow five other handles, two of which are their own fan clubs.
To these ivory tower residents I say: get off the internet, princess. You're kind of missing its point. Leave it to us trolls.