Recently, snark and sarcasm about my University’s Sportball program led me into the seedy, human-waste-filled undertow of the Social Web. Here are my thoughts on my experience, and on the danger of social twits imbuing a faculty member with more power than they actually possess.
Update, Nov. 22, 2015: NOT SERIOUSLY: Last night, my University’s Sportsball team crushed the opposition in an incredible victory. This confirms the claims of the twits that it was me, and me alone, who controls the fate of our University’s Sportsball program. I demand a commensurate pay raise. BUT SERIOUSLY: Joking aside, the twits should be ashamed. My original tweet laid no blame for failure or success on any single person – it was a sarcastic lament on outcomes of the Sportsball program. But the twits blamed me for the program’s failures. How dare they. A student’s failure is ultimately their own, just as their success is ultimately their own. I cannot make a student absolutely fail any more than I can make them absolutely succeed. To lay the blame for their failures on a single sarcastic faculty member is disrespectful to the students on that team. My claim of being the sole reason for their success is purely a joke; but my disdain for those vocal people on Twitter who grossly oversimplified the many complicated interlocking reasons why a single team of students succeeds or fails is real.
This past Sunday, I posted a note on Twitter (and other platforms) that was an implicitly sarcastic criticism of my University’s Sportsball team. I did so using a personal Twitter account. Within minutes, a person I neither follow nor who follows me responded to “thank [me] for [my] support.” I replied to them that my post was not done in support, and suggested (albeit more sarcastically and tersely than was wise) that they be more careful when replying to tweets that actually intend the opposite sense that they think. In none of this did I @-tag or hash-tag any other accounts. When the person replied to me, they @-tagged and hash-tagged things, including the twitter account of our Univertsity’s Sportsball program; my reply to them thus contained the @-tag (like “reply all” in email, the defauly in Twitter). But I was not intentionally trying to troll anyone.
I didn’t know it at the time, but the person who tweeted at me was the spouse of our University’s head Sportsball coach. Whoops. I doubt knowing whom this person was really would have changed anything about the intent of my response, except that I might have spent the extra 2 seconds to wordsmith my reply. Because I had been sarcastic with this person, I was suddenly subject to a bunch (about a dozen over 2-3 days) of intentional trolling tweets. People I’ve never interacted with before, and who do not follow me, suddenly accused me of all sorts of things – of being in a no-name, unsuccessful department at my campus, of being a bad physicist, and even of sucking because I use Linux. These were all baseless ad hominem attacks. I took none of the bait. The first rule of social forums is: don’t feed the trolls.
People accused me of all sorts of things. They accused me of being disloyal to my school. I should note there is no loyalty oath to be a faculty member at my University. They accused me of being the reason our Sportsball team is so bad. That’s putting a lot of power and authority on just one physicist! They made all kinds of non-sequitur and ad hominem attacks. It wasn’t close to the worst I’ve ever been bullied, but it revealed a kind of riptide of human sewage flowing just beneath the surface of the fast-moving waters of the modern social web.
On Wednesday, I got an email to my University account from a MBA student at my University, criticizing my tweet and accusing me of trolling. They told me that my physics program has no national respect at all (wrong); they told me that even though the last head coach was a “bum,” the current one is essentially the savior of the program (fact: we’ve so far won 2 games in 2 years); they told me that my twitter comments are not what the program needs right now, and blamed the team’s failures on the kind of “internal negativity” that I expressed. He wished me fun with my “beakers.” He accused me of being unprofessional, all while using his university email account to send his ad hominem attack.
I brought all this to the attention of my department chair, who is in the loop regarding this in case anything weird happens (e.g. I am physically threatened or any of my property is damaged). You never know. The river of human sewage underneath all of this started to leak toward the real world, transitioning from twitter to email to… well, let’s hope it just stays in the electronic world.
The irony is that in casting all kinds of accusations as me, the twits (twerps?) have set me up as a god. As a rule of thumb, never create a false god. This always comes back to bite. In their view, I am the reason the Sportsball team is so bad. My lack of support is the problem. My negativity is the problem. Saying this imbues me with unrealistic fate-controlling power over a group of students just trying to move a ball down a field. That seems odd. The twits tell me to be loyal and at the same time to be smarter – a contradiction. In casting these words at me, the twits have inadvertantly setup a terrible catch-22 situation in which I can claim victory either way.
So here I go. Here I will exercise the fallacy of their accusations.
I declare, here and now, that I cast all of my incredible fate-altering faculty powers behind my University’s Sportsball team. If they win this weekend’s game, then I am vindicated. I am a god. I control the fate of our Sportsball team, and I am all-powerful and deserve a commensurate salary raise.
But if our Sportball team fails this Saturday, then my criticism of this Sportsball program stands – that it is going very badly for the student athletes and for the school at a whole. In fact, it shall have gone even worse than it did a week ago. Why? Because even with the benefit of my god-like powers, my blessing bestowed upon this team of young warriors, they shall have been unable to bring victory home to our glorious campus. They shall have failed despite the vast endless power of my blind but omnipotent support for their efforts.
Never offer a faculty member power they do not possess nor wish to wield. Because if they DO wield it, it has a way of making those who offered it look like the only fools left in the room.
