Cucks, Shills, and Trolls - Oh My!

If you have been on social media for any length of time, you will inevitably run into those individuals who don't know you from the man in the moon, yet they will take offense at what you say for some reason.  Or, it may be someone you have known a while, maybe for years, who all of a sudden gets their feelings hurt over something you said that didn't have that intention.   That happened on several occasions to me personally, and recently in the past couple of weeks, a long-time "friend" actually blew up at me, blocked me on social media, and just got nasty over a post I had made fun of the liberal Democrat Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  Oddly, the person who was "offended" has never really been in touch with me since we worked together at the same office years ago, but now all of a sudden they felt it necessary to "call me out" because of something stupid like satirizing a public figure who actually deserved what she got.  Before moving on, let me just give a brief lesson as to what these types of people are, as several terms are used for them, and that needs to be clarified.

There are three common terms used for people who get "triggered" by others on social media, and they are as follows:

1. Cuck - The dictionary definition of a cuck is "a weak or servile individual," whom the Google definition notes is given this name for "having moderate or progressive political views."  In other words, it is someone who swallows the party line, and even doggedly defends it when too spineless to formulate their own opinions based on their own research.

2. Shill - Similar to a cuck, a shill is defined as being one of those people who "pretend to give an impartial endorsement to something in which they themselves have an interest."  In other words, an "impartial partisan," which is a contradiction in terms.

3. Troll - Defined as a person who deliberately makes an offensive and/or provocative online post about something just to stir up crap.  If someone gives into it, it is called "feeding the trolls." 

Notice, a person can be all three at the same time, and many are.  Also, in the sense of the third, sometimes "trolling" can be to our advantage, especially when we can tell off the no-good career politicians in Congress on their Twitter feeds, which I do as a guilty indulgence.  So, to a degree, many of us can be trolls in a sense, and that is fine.  Depends, however, on the purpose of trolling.

That all being established, let me tell the story of my recent engagement with one of these individuals.  Some years back, I worked in the title industry as an administrative assistant, and although I worked with the title company directly, we had satellite offices that were provided by the development firm we were working with on their projects, and at one of the satellite offices the development company had a leasing agent who I got to know somewhat well at the time.  The guy was of Russian heritage, and we struck up a conversation about it given I am a blood descendant of St. Vladimir.  He was also one of these young entrepreneurial types too - he engaged in a number of business pursuits outside the office (legitimate ones of course) as did a lot of these young guys at the time.  He also seemed like an easy-going sort.  Over the years, although I was "friends" with him on social media, I didn't interact much with him although he was active on many platforms.  We both were simply too busy and had our own lives to live and therefore didn't have the time to stay in touch.  That was all well and good though, as it means little one way or another; often, many people we are "friends" on social media with don't chat every day anyway, but we know we are all out there somewhere, which is the point - it is neither good nor bad actually.  A couple of weeks ago though, that all changed.

In posting a meme on my personal page sort of making fun of what a dimwit AOC is (and she really is too), this guy all of a sudden gets "triggered" and posts some drivel about how "she is the only one to get stuff done," and about "how evil the Republicans are," and also that she is to be admired as "a woman of color" who made it (seriously?  I can think of many other stellar examples than her!).  When I reminded this guy that his own relatives were killed in the Gulag due to ideology similar to hers, he went ballistic on me, used the F-bomb a lot, and then proceeded to "unfriend" and block me on that particular social media site.  That now leads me to a few observations about this individual, as he is representative of a lot of this nonsense going around these days.

First, as I mentioned, this is the last person I would have imagined promoting and supporting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, as she stands in direct opposition to a lot of things this guy actually represents as a person.  My former friend, for instance, is an entrepreneur - he is involved in many business endeavors that have benefitted him economically quite well, and he embodies the young up-and-coming executive types we see in Corporate America these days.  Ironically, people like him are the ones AOC and her ilk want to punish - for these Socialist ding-dongs like AOC, this guy represents the ultimate evil; the self-made wealthy exec who has an affluent lifestyle.   So, why would a guy like this defend her, especially when she is ultimately out to get people like him?  Also, I mentioned his Russian roots - this guy had parents who survived the Soviets, and he may have even had ancestors or distant relatives who were killed by Stalin and the other Marxists, people that AOC seem to admire as role models.  It is utterly inconceivable why someone who had family killed by an oppressive regime could turn around and support that same sort of oppression in this country - I would bet he has relatives turning in their graves over that.   My former friend, in that regard, puts me in mind of people like Ana Kasparian, the co-host on the liberal shill-fest called "The Young Turks," a show ironically named after a regime that was responsible for killing 1.5 million of her ancestors' people (Ana is Armenian, and her co-host, the fat, potty-mouthed demagogue known as Cenk Uygur, is a Turk who denies the Armenian Genocide ever happened - talk about paradoxes!).  He also puts me in mind of the billionaire puppet-master George Soros, who despite having Jewish heritage himself was a Nazi collaborator during WWII and is still virulently anti-Semitic today.  It is odd that even those who come from people who were persecuted often forget what their forebears went through, and it does a great disservice to their own legacy.  It is the same with many Blacks in the US cuddling up to Islam for some reason - Islam is, in reality, the very thing that made the slave trade possible, and for the segment of the Black population that is hollering for "reparations," why don't they sue Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Mali, or some of those other predominantly Islamic countries that enslaved their ancestors in the first place?  Again, this is the classic definition of a shill mentality - those who were the most affected and oppressed become the shills of their oppressors rather than being honest enough to call them out on it.  Getting back to the Black community, if I were a Black person, I would be pressing for legislation, for instance, to shut down Planned Parenthood for good, as it was founded to commit genocide against the Black community primarily - Margaret Sanger was a racist, and her eugenics program she pushed sought to eliminate what she called "human weeds,"  which included Blacks, Catholic immigrants, and certain poor American regional populations such as my home state of WV (which, ironically, is echoed by so-called "Conservative Christian" Pat Robertson). Yet, I don't hear Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and the other race-baiters getting fired up about that - if I were Black, I would be incensed when I learned that.  And, I don't hear my friend coming to terms that the Marxist diatribe that AOC and her kind spout on a daily basis is the same ideology that eventually led to some unfortunate things that happened to his own people.   As the philosopher George Santayana (whom I don't agree with for the most part) once said, "Those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it."  This should serve as a warning to many of us that ignorance can be deadly in some important circumstances.  Yet, my friend gets offended at me for pointing this out.  Ridiculous yet ironic, isn't it?

This guy is not the first, nor will he be the last, person that I have had incidents like this with.  Most of the time, my friends with differing views are respectful and refrain from comment on something they may disagree with, and I respect them the same way.  There should be a level of social media etiquette that establishes that what a person posts on their own page is their view, and they have the freedom to post it - if someone disagrees with what is said, they have every right to hide it from news feeds and email notifications so they don't have to see it, and thus everyone can remain friends while respectfully disagreeing on some things.  If that were to be really practiced as it should, then people who should know each other better would not be "unfriending" each other over a bubblehead like AOC.  Thanks for letting me share, and see you next time.