THE WOB
Forget road rage; web rage is at least as shrill
Remember how quaint mobs used to be, shrieking for blood at the guillotines? A modern day mob, amplified through the internet, can make one of those beheadings seem like sherry hour at the Supreme Court. A couple of years ago I became a target of internet jeers so indecorous that I daresay a new word is needed: How about “wob” for a web mob? Wob mentality, wob rule, wobocracy …?
My fault entirely, I hasten to add. When I agreed to let salon.com publish an acerbic bit of father humor as their lead article for Father’s Day, I knew I was being thrown to the herd. A mock-curmudgeonly rant against children? Of course the groundlings would grumble. What I didn’t anticipate was how savagely the wob would drown out the voices of moderation and support – in some ways worse than an execution rabble of yore.
Here’s one explanation for the difference. Members of the guillotine gang were accountable to some small degree. They confronted each other in the flesh, and could expect a face-to-face response from those who disagreed. (“Is that the grape talking, Guillaume, or do you really mean you’re going to tear his unborn children limb from limb?”) This served as a social brake on the process. By contrast, when a wobber posts an anonymous response on an internet forum, other untraceable letters pile on within seconds. Emboldened by seeing twaddle printed as gospel, passions piggyback out of control. At the height of the frenzy sparked by my piece of fluff, conspiracy theories compounded each other, and those who dared claim I was not actually a child hater did so at considerable peril.
The personal irony for me, of course, is that the tender live wire binding parent and child is one of the primary threads I’ve spent three decades unraveling in novels, short stories, memoirs and travel pieces set around the globe. In fact, I tossed off “Simon Says Eats Sh.t” (yes, the title was deliberately provocative) as an antidote to all the deeply felt father pieces I’ve authored over the span of my career. Call that the Bumbling Gerald Ford Law. Because of one or two missteps, the most athletic president we’ve ever had was the one branded a klutz. Thou shalt be known by the exception to your rule.
Granted, a run-of-the-mill wobber could not be expected to know my context. But just because they got dark chocolate on Father’s Day rather than the milk chocolate they were expecting, did the 200 voices calling for my head have to pillory my three or four dozen defenders in such venomously personal terms? It was so repetitively recommended we get our tubes tied that, without my knowledge, two of my sons climbed the ramparts to call foul.
What was the reaction to my sons’ postings among the wob? A little like the lynching party in “To Kill a Mockingbird” when Scout stands beside her dad and shames them with her innocence. Most of my assailants wandered off with tail between legs. But within hours they were back with new and improved conspiracy theories: I must have written the children’s postings myself! What a loser!
For its part, salon.com pronounced the display “just awesome,” adding brightly: “It’s always fun to see the crazies come out. Hope you didn’t take it personally.”
Not too much, actually. My kids thought the original piece hilarious and, after the initial ouch, found the ensuing hysteria even more so. But we couldn’t avoid learning a couple of painful lessons, to wit: (1) there’s an awful lot of hurt out there among the wob. The infertile, the father-abused and mother-bereaved, anyone who was ever wronged by a spouse or guilted by a child, all projected their wounds in a manner that inspired pity rather than impatience.
And (2), most wobbers simply don’t know how to read. Maybe they’ve spent too much time swapping emoticons, but they are shockingly blind to tone and deaf to irony. Dumbest of all seem to be the early-bird posters, the ones who respond as soon as an article appears, maybe because, like village idiots in a remote port, they have little else to do with their time than await the day’s catch as it tumbles forth on the docks. But even readers who took hours to reflect on the fact that I called my second wife “ten or 20 years” younger than me attacked me for not knowing which and/or trying to fudge her age. It never occurred to them I was goofing on myself – indicating how clueless I was as father and husband. When they occasionally hushed long enough for more discerning readers to point out that this was funny, the response was universal: “Well, he isn’t funny like Erma Bombeck is funny.”
Guilty as charged.
But I’m an optimist, and what I mostly take away are the letters that bravely stood up to the crowd, including one posted by a woman who signed herself PO Mama shortly after my sons posted theirs. To me, she was the Chinese civilian standing alone before the army tank, teaching me again that in every horde, there is always at least one hero; in every pack, a few who stand apart. Because hers is so beautiful, I beg your indulgence to excerpt it here.
“To the boys: You guys are great. The way you love him, your dad’s a lucky, lucky man. I sure didn’t take your Dad’s grump routine as serious. I just read the article and chuckled. I don’t know why most folks felt they had to rip him up, but trust me, plenty more people got the joke. The world’s not full of enemies, dear boys. Right now people are just edgy and they forget to be kind to each other. They’re scared of what’s going on in the world and it makes some of them feel better somehow to make someone else feel bad. But that’s not most people. And it’s not you or your Dad. You just gave him a Father’s Day gift that will make it worth it to read through all of these letters. Bless your hearts, don’t worry about it, and sleep sweet.”
Isn’t that lovely? If I knew who she was, I would tell her so. Not in a public forum, but person to person – a whisper of thanks for an act of quiet decency against the howls of the wob.
The.American.Word. 