Act One. Ask Not For Whom The Bell Trolls; It Trolls for Thee.

Someone sent me a link to this podcast.

Writer Lindy West has been harassed by hundreds of trolls online. But only one ever apologized for his remarks. Lindy began to wonder, could he explain why trolls choose to be so cruel? (21 minutes)

545: If You Don’t Have Anything Nice to Say, SAY IT IN ALL CAPS (01.23.2015)

It’s safe to say whatever you want on the Internet; nobody will know it’s you. But that same anonymity makes it possible for people to say all the awful things that make the Internet such an annoying and sometimes frightening place. This week: what happens when the Internet turns on you? (If you prefer, here's a bleeped version.)

Here is the transcript. https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/545/transcript

Ira Glass' prologue sounds like something that I would read here, the Trib, or the PG.

This something that I found like that everybody can agree on is a graphic. It's a graphic that somebody showed me on the internet. It's an optical illusion created by a professor at MIT who studies vision and the brain.

And basically, there are two gray boxes. One of them is surrounded by lighter stuff so it looks darker, and the other gray box is surrounded by darker stuff so it looks lighter. But in fact, the whole point of it is it's an optical illusion. The two gray squares are exactly the same shade of gray.

Now, that's just a fact. But of course, since this graphic is on the internet, there's a comment section. And you might think, what would you possibly comment on? Right?

It doesn't seem like there's anything, really, here to discuss. Gray is gray. And I'll refrain from a Fifty Shades of Gray joke here and just say, when you scroll down through the comments, people do find a way to disagree, even about this.

And I don't know, maybe you've been on the internet-- they like to curse about it. One person writes, "what a load of shit. They are different colors." Another writes, "not the same [BEEP] shade." Says a third, "not convinced."

Then people start in with advice. And at first, they're like, super nice about it, right? They're trying to be helpful. They tell the doubters to take their fingers and cover over everything but the two gray squares on their screen and they'll see they are the same color.

Several people suggested they can open up the file on Photoshop or MS Paint and use the Dropper tool to see the exact RGB values of the colors and they'll see that they're the same. By the way, 120, 120, 120 with 160 hue, 113 loom.

After all of that, somebody still writes, "The second square looks brighter to me." Somebody else replies, "It's definitely brighter than you." People start calling each other stupid, which of course leads to the kind of big, overbroad, sweeping statement you see in comment sections everywhere. Quote, "If after reading this thread, you refuse to actually test it and choose to stick with your dogmatic belief, then you are everything that is wrong with America."