From ‘nice guy’ to ‘asshole’ and(hopefully) back again: a pissing match with God (Part 5)

{image courtesy of CollegePartyGuru.com}

The recent frenzy over the outing of the genuine identity behind Violentacrez, the Interwebs‘ notorious Reddit Netizen, and the resulting, yet inevitable, Netwide conversation over the ethics of Trolling {older 2008 article} and the limits of Net privacy stirs up some of my mental ghosts.

Random events unrelated to myself illuminating and triggering my “pissed off at the universe” shit should come as no surprise, especially to myself. I did, after all swallow a bottle of pills earlier this month following what many may view as seemingly random events and circumstances. This suicide attempt put to an end an uneasy third truce in a now nearly comical battle/argument/gripe with the Almighty and my own frigged up psyche.

In a small way the heated rhetoric of this nation wide public conversation echoes the private events and circumstances – or rather the emotional factors of those events – which transformed this formerly smiling, enjoyable, partying nice guy into an asshole.

The Reddit creep controversy is, when brought down to its most concentrated essentials, all about Identity and defining Self; its about how our self-determined essence will interact and relate with or to those around us. On the Net, unlike in our IRL dealings, we can choose to become anyone we wish to be, and do so mostly without repercussions.

Many, including myself, would argue our Avatar-selves are undiluted, concentrated, uninhibited versions of ourselves. They are ourselves+.

In the anonymity of our cyber Id we are, paradoxically, free to live a truism: “we are only who we are when no one is looking”.

Trolls take this fluidness of interaction to a different place. Many create personas they most decidedly are not. In Troll form they can behave as their worst notion of Self for amusement as well as for the sake of unmasking more damaging phoniness and creepy behaviors.

I’ll not tackle the ethics of Trolling. There are folks I care deeply about who are Trolls and they are quite capable of speaking for themselves. The Trolling phenomenon and recent Reddit nonsense does, however, help to illuminate for myself my piss fest with Self and God.

I’ve come to understand a bit more all my pissing and moaning. Within omnipresent resentments and frustrations with family and friends and many, many near psychotic public blowups with perfect strangers in banks, coffee shops and bureaucratic hell holes, I had felt, all too acutely, an assault on Self.

From those first unsteady steps away from nice guy on through to skipping and dancing as full fledged asshole, I now grasp a bit better what it was I was up to. I believe I understand where and how things went so damn wrong.

Hunter got trolled.

For the sake of a smoke, a card game, and a promise, I got trolled – and I trolled….myself.

Have you ever been in conversations, particularly with people you think you know fairly well, and thought “I’m missing something here..we’re miss-communicating somehow and I can’t put my finger on where…and I’m not sure I want to.” ?

That feeling, an eerie sense of urgency suggesting that you are, for the first time, grasping an uncomfortable element within another individual, a person you believed you understood, can be disturbing. It’s not unlike playing an old, well loved vinyl LP (some of you are likely too young to know LPs) with a slight, barely-there scratch. It’ll skip just a note or a part of a word – irritating and unsettling just as you’re getting into the best riff. You know that the almost queasy feeling you get when listening oughta be reason enough to trash the thing, but you love the album. You wonder when you’ll get to replacing it.

Multiply that queasiness by a factor of say 50, bring it in to almost every conversation you have with folks who might, just might, have an affect on your life long term, and you have a grasp on the source of this pissing match. Understand the queasiness and you might grasp the emotion, originating in a smoky room, which over time became my difficult to subdue rage. No wonder I’m now an asshole.

During a card-game in which I got monumentally snowed I, for the sake of a promise, began morphing into an asshole – an asshole you can’t see before you thanks to the anonymity of the Net.

It’s God’s fault as well as my own. I’m righteously pissed.

You may wish to learn how such things happen, cus no one is immune. Take a trip back with me, and definitely take my hand. There may well be Trolls.

To die for: suicide and survival

From ‘nice guy’ to ‘asshole’ and(hopefully) back again: a pissing match with God

From ‘nice guy’ to ‘asshole’ and(hopefully) back again: a pissing match with God (Part 2)

From ‘nice guy’ to ‘asshole’ and(hopefully) back again: a pissing match with God (Part 3)

From ‘nice guy’ to ‘asshole’ and(hopefully) back again: a pissing match with God (Part 4)

From ‘nice guy’ to ‘asshole’ and(hopefully) back again: a pissing match with God (Part 5)

From ‘nice guy’ to ‘asshole’ and(hopefully) back again: a pissing match with God (Part 5.1)

{image courtesy of Google Images}