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I’m on the cusp of blocking another high-school acquaintance from my Facebook friends list. Trouble is — the guy’s parents were from East Germany, and he currently lives in Vietnam. He has perfectly good reasons to mistrust Communist governments. But it’s getting so that every time I hit “share” on a post about standing up to the alt-right, he swamps me with comments about the evils of Marxism, and I have poor debate skills, so I suspect replying that I don’t think North America is currently threatening to slide too far to the left right now, or that protesting against fascists is not a slippery slope to holding mass trials of all the people you suspect of bourgeois tendencies, will just rile him up more.
I’m keeping an eye on him; if he starts going over to the comment threads of my friends who don’t know him, he’s cut. The frustrating thing is that I barely spoke to him in high school, we just ran in the same circles, but I feel like I have to keep him on my page out of some combination of old loyalties and fear that ignoring him will just “prove I’m living in an intellectual bubble,” or something. Smarter heads than I have pointed out that the latter is a fallacy trolls often use to force themselves on people. But I don’t believe he’s an actual troll, just that he’s had more personal experience with one problem with the other.
On a lighter note, has anyone ever written a Terry Pratchett/Don Marquis crossover? Because I’m picturing a page of interaction between Archie the Cockroach and Death, and... well, if nothing else, there’d be no trouble telling whose dialogue is which.
I’m keeping an eye on him; if he starts going over to the comment threads of my friends who don’t know him, he’s cut. The frustrating thing is that I barely spoke to him in high school, we just ran in the same circles, but I feel like I have to keep him on my page out of some combination of old loyalties and fear that ignoring him will just “prove I’m living in an intellectual bubble,” or something. Smarter heads than I have pointed out that the latter is a fallacy trolls often use to force themselves on people. But I don’t believe he’s an actual troll, just that he’s had more personal experience with one problem with the other.
On a lighter note, has anyone ever written a Terry Pratchett/Don Marquis crossover? Because I’m picturing a page of interaction between Archie the Cockroach and Death, and... well, if nothing else, there’d be no trouble telling whose dialogue is which.
no subject
Date: 2017-09-26 03:10 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2017-09-26 03:10 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2017-09-26 05:14 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2017-09-26 05:29 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2017-09-26 07:33 pm (UTC)From:I don't see how stating either of those positions requires debate skills. We are demonstrably in the middle of a far-right slide and him being a sea lion is a distraction, not a counterargument.
But I don’t believe he’s an actual troll, just that he’s had more personal experience with one problem with the other.
Similarly, the fact that he's not a troll does not then oblige you to keep talking with him if he's providing nothing but stress. It's like relationships: people don't have to be abusers before you're permitted to break up with them. Sometimes they're just bad at relationships. Or personally a bad match for you. It's all right to get out sooner than the worst-case scenario.
On a lighter note, has anyone ever written a Terry Pratchett/Don Marquis crossover?
Not that I've seen, but it would be adorable. You want to write it?