How miserable does someone have to be to ‘troll’ a cute dog picture?

By David McElroy · April 30, 2019

I got home just past sunset Monday evening. I took Lucy out into the back yard and she ran around a bit. Then she ran over to me and looked up with this sweet expression. I had the camera with me, so I fired off about five shots. It was almost completely dark, so I didn’t expect to get much.

One of the shots was in focus, even though the shutter speed was a sixth of a second. She had stayed still for that instant and I had miraculously held the camera steady enough, so I got a good shot in the dim light. I’d gotten lucky.

After cropping and editing the picture as usual, I posted it to Facebook, Instagram and Reddit. Although it’s nowhere close to the best picture I’ve seen of Lucy — even lately — it was well-received, especially on Reddit.

But then the trolls started on Reddit. Although the vast majority of people loved the photo — and it had received more than 17,000 upvotes by 3 a.m. — there were a few bizarre people who were attacking me over the picture. Why? I still have no idea.

It seems as though some people saw the reflected blue light in her eyes and concluded that somehow the picture wasn’t what I claimed. I’m still completely baffled about what the point of this alleged deception would have been.

There were people who said the reflections in her eyes indicated that it was blue skies and white clouds, presumably meaning they thought I shot it during the daytime instead of when I did. In reality, the reflection is the last blue in the sky plus the trees over us. Again, I’m completely confused about what the purpose of such deception would have been.

None of it made any sense.

I can ignore these trolls, of course. This isn’t anything that matters. It won’t affect me in the long run. But I can’t figure out why this happens — because it happens to me every time I have a photo on a public site that becomes popular.

When a lot of people like something, a minority will show up to attack me for the most bizarre things. And it never makes any sense.

How miserable does a person’s life have to be for him to decide it’s fun or worthwhile to become an anonymous troll just randomly attacking people on public social media sites? I have no idea what turns a person into that sort of banal monster. I’ll never understand it.

This isn’t just about this picture. It’s not just about me.

It’s about social media in general. And it’s about what human beings are at our core.

Why does social media make these sorts of attacks possible so easily? Why are certain sorts of people so likely to jump on the bandwagon of an attack, even when there is no possible motive for the deception they are making up? Why are they so eager to tear people down?

Why are humans so likely to hate anyone who does something which is praised? Why do people look for reasons to hate any innocent thing — even a cute picture of a dog — instead of just moving on to something else they might prefer?

What makes us invest our time in attacking and destroying — in big ways and tiny ways — when it’s so much easier to just let others live their lives?

I don’t have an answer. I don’t pretend to understand it. But my gut tells me that this is part of an irrational hatred inside the human race. I suspect there’s at least a little bit of this inside all of us — and I think it comes out in irrational ways that we try to justify to ourselves as reasonable.

I don’t understand how the human race has survived this long. I don’t understand how we’ve stopped ourselves from killing each other off

The experience reminded me of a recent chilling episode of the public radio show This American Life which looked at the online conspiracy theorists who invented bizarre explanations about why the Sandy Hook elementary school murders never happened. I don’t mean that me being attacked over a dog photo is the same as parents having their lives turned upside down by insane people, but the mechanisms involved seem disturbingly similar. (I strongly urge you to listen to that show.)

Online trolls might usually seem inconsequential, but I suspect they are indicative of far deeper issues embedded in human DNA — and I suspect all of us are just a little bit insane in ways we don’t understand.

Most of us manage to keep our insanity under control most of the time — at least enough to allow society to function — but I fear these online trolls hint at the ways in which human society remains hopelessly enmeshed in hidden forces which still threaten to destroy us. I hope I’m wrong.

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The Republican Party is dead. It still exists in name, of course, but it’s nothing but a shell. All that’s left are idiots and stooges and con men of the MAGA party. When Donald Trump is gone — which won’t be long — those populist idiots and pragmatic fools will have no one to follow. Democrats will thrive. They will take more power than ever and they will push the federal government further to the radical far left than ever. When that happens, don’t just blame Trump if you’re a conservative. Blame every person who has claimed to be a conservative and has given up on principles, character and everything else that Republicans once claimed to stand for. As someone who worked as a GOP political consultant for many years, this is disgusting and disturbing to me. Those who have enabled Trump to have almost unchecked power are going to be shocked when they see what they will unleash in the long run. It’s been plain all along what this narcissistic con man is. It’s your fault that you chose to pretend not to see what he really is.

We are ruled by the dumbest and most incompetent people among us — and we have a system which allows stupid and irresponsible people to force the costs of their idiocy onto smarter and wiser people. Can we get away with that? Yes, for quite some time. But we eventually reach a point at which the dumbest of the dumb — who are habitual liars and mentally ill fools — lead us to the disasters and destruction that some of us have seen coming for years. We are approaching that point. And yet most of the idiots around us still wave their rhetorical banners of support for the evil people who are leading us to ruin — and all of them point their fingers at someone else, never noticing that their own enthusiastic support of evil is to blame. When things finally fall apart, blame yourself for your blindness to the evil, not whoever happens to be in power when it happens.

I’ve been making some changes to the site lately and there are more changes coming in the days ahead, so don’t be surprised if you some small differences. This is not a wholesale redesign, but rather the addition of some features. Since they’re smarter than I am, I’ve put Oliver and Alex in charge of the technical work, which you can see in this action photo from the control room of our media complex. I recently added a series of landing pages for readers who randomly discover the site from an Internet search. I’ve also changed the YouTube link at the top of the page to go to the new YouTube channel for video essays that reflect things I’ve already published here. (Here’s a little bit about both of the YouTube channels I’m working on.) In addition, I’m trying to move away from using Instagram, so I’m experimenting with photo plug-ins that will eventually allow me to host the pictures — cats, dogs, sunsets, whatever — that I often take. So don’t be surprised to see more changes. Thanks for your patience. Let’s hope Alex and Oliver know what they’re doing.

I have no use for the theocratic and repressive government of Iran. The people who run the country are cruel at best and evil at worst. The Iranian people deserve freedom. But I have no personal quarrel with anybody in Iran. While I’m not thrilled about a future Iranian government having nuclear weapons, I’m just as concerned about nukes in the hands of politicians in Israel, Pakistan, India, China and Russia. I’m not even thrilled with the U.S., Britain and France having them, either, because I don’t trust any politicians to be responsible with such terrible weapons. All I can say with certainty is that American taxpayers have no business attacking Iran, especially since we’re being forced to pay for this attack in order to benefit the politicians of Israel — and nobody else. If Middle Eastern countries want to fight among themselves, that’s none of my business. It’s not the business of the U.S. government, either. I have no quarrel with anybody in Iran — and having the government which claims to represent me launch an unprovoked attack against a sovereign country will only make all Americans less safe in the near future. This attack is poorly conceived and morally unjustified. Remember that when the Iranians launch attacks that we will then condemn as “terrorism.” What the U.S. is doing right now looks like terrorism to me. And let’s not forget that the attack is the latest in a long line of unconstitutional wars by various U.S. presidents — who have no legal power to declare war on their own, according to the U.S. Constitution.

A child having a tantrum understands only one thing: Did I get my way or not? He doesn’t understand the issues involved. He doesn’t understand the reasons that went into a decision. He doesn’t understand any of the things that mature and reasonable adults have to understand in order to live healthy lives. By his reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling to strike down his disastrous tariff scheme, Donald Trump shows himself to be — once more — a screaming child having a tantrum. Outside the world of mob bosses who expect to get their way every time, normal adults don’t act this way, but Trump isn’t normal. He’s an angry and vengeful man who has narcissistic personality disorder. And we are in danger as a result. Trump doesn’t understand the legal issues involved in this ruling. He doesn’t understand economics. He doesn’t understand rule of law. He doesn’t understand that he can ever be wrong. All he understands is that he didn’t get his way. And he is now a narcissistic and raging little boy who also happens to hold life-and-death power over most humans on this planet. He’s dangerous — and the system which gives him that power is even more dangerous.

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