ON THE AVENUES: If you really want to be my friend.

Let’s begin with the acknowledgement that social media is one of the best ways ever devised by mankind to enable anti-social behavior.

Can this statement be doubted? You know it. I know it. The man in the moon knows it, and so do the Russians, because after all, they’re watching every breath we take, and monitoring every keystroke we make.

Certain useful aspects of anti-social media are the exceptions that prove the rule; the medium is a fine way to stay in touch with genuine, real-world friends; to share photographs and memories; and indulge in occasional, purely recreational voyeurism.

Guilty of the latter, your honor.

But the worst angels of our nature have long since discovered anti-social media’s proficiency when it comes to the creation and dissemination of odoriferous bile and sheer disinformation, although it isn’t clear whether a platform like Facebook has become a proxy partisan battleground for reality, or the other way around.

Venom, poison and toxicity; it’s enough to make the Grinch’s three-decker toadstool and sauerkraut sandwich with arsenic sauce look more like a Faberge egg.

Sticking to the Facebook paradigm, it is no longer surprising when a complete stranger parachutes into a conversation, dispensing f-bombs, threats and insults, having watched carefully for the perfect opportunity to be the sort of living human penis that we’d quickly eject from the barroom without a moment’s second thoughts.

As the kids say, trolls and their masturbatory trolling (eyes rolling).

However, what still causes me to scratch my head is when this starring role of ill-tempered instigator, played typically by furious white men, most of them old, who case the joint from the very same vantage point in the bushes where they deposit the urine borne of so many Bud Lights, emanates from one who wishes to be known as one of my “friends.”

This strikes me as strange, not to mention magnificently, mentally unbalanced.

Understanding that 40-odd years of cutthroat, robber baron, end-stage-capitalistic and neoliberal economic doctrine has removed most vestiges of etiquette from human discourse in America, it seems to me that “friend” is one of those words that really should be meaningful. Otherwise, don’t use it.

Perhaps what is ultimately most depressing about anti-social media is the cheapening of this word.

I have almost 3,000 “friends” on Facebook, 60-something of whom are dead; allowing for multiple accounts and other weirdness, as well as “friends” who last posted in 2012, the whole shebeen boils down to a few hundred persons known to me on sight, and if defined properly, are in fact casual acquaintances, along with a few dozen more who truly are close friends in any emotionally quantifiable way.

Now, if you’re eager to troll me on Facebook by hijacking a thread – to refer to me as an idiot, a liar, a commie dupe, or any of many other disparagements, all the while waving your arms like a raving lunatic as the accumulated wisdom of 10,001 barnyard sunrises flows from your aged countenance like raw sewage into yonder gently winding river – well, then it’s difficult for me to view you as a “friend” on Facebook, or anywhere else, for that matter.

It would be relatively easy to apply the universal anti-social media solution to this problem by erasing this “friend’s” very existence, and ceasing a dysfunctional ‘friendship” that obviously isn’t, by blocking and publicly scourging the serial offender.

And yet, to me, this course of action is both tedious and unrewarding.

Blocking might remove a squawking troll who lacks basic manners. But it also eliminates my lingering belief, crazy as it sounds, that any of us can choose to accept rationality and change our way of thinking.

Bizarrely, my viewpoint mirrors that of traditional religious faith, in the sense that anyone can be saved, except I reject the supernatural element and replace it with this: Anyone can choose to save themselves, by opening their eyes and seeing another side of the story.

Returning to Facebook, this means that my generally preferred solution is to unfollow those “friends” who clutter my feed with regurgitations of someone else’s falsehoods via memes and everyday thoughtlessness.

“Friends” who are capable of communicating in their own words merit a step higher in my hierarchy; their continued presence is negotiable. We may not see eye to eye, but we’re capable of communicating. As yet, there are possibilities.

But the “friends” who insist on being cancerous conveyors of pure malice?

It’s still a tough call. I don’t go to their anti-social media feeds and raise a ruckus, just as I don’t walk into anyone’s house or apartment and begin spray painting graffiti on the walls or pelting the cat with garbage.

In fact, I don’t even behave this way with non-friends. Why, then, are some of us unable to grasp this distinction? Be my guest and claim that your insanity stems from a love of country. To me it sounds a good deal more like blind fear and self-loathing.

It’s hardest when the trollish, insulting anti-social media “friend” is someone who you remember as being interesting, which in my world usually implies a person I can recall having beers or coffee with, conversing, and being capable of learning something from.

Now these pleasant memories aren’t jibing with the angry electronic interjections, and I’m left to wonder what went wrong. What changed with them?

After all, a mind surely remains a terrible thing to waste.

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Shifting gears, for a great many years I delighted in informing listeners that I could far easier imagine a week-long pleasure trip to then-hermetically sealed, radically communist Tirana, Albania than being compelled to reside for the same length of time in Jeffersonville, just five or so miles away from Nawbany as the crow flies.

Then Albania went and shook off the commie yoke, and no longer could I use it as an example. When Tirana defected, I had no choice but to embrace Pyongyang as the counterweight to Clark County. It wasn’t quite the same.

Consequently I’m prepared to concede that this joke has long since ceased to be relevant. Living and working in Jeffersonville isn’t far-fetched, especially since my grand scheme of 30 years to render New Albany habitable for intelligent human life has proven to have yielded mixed results, if not outright failure.

The very fact that I cannot risk explaining the reasons for this feeling for fear of reprisals from today’s elite New Albanian cadres, whether political or social, perhaps summarizes the depth of the issue. The prevailing mediocrity is like sand storms in the Sahara.

Back when it all started, a (real) friend used to insist to me that I was wasting my time; New Albany simply could not be reformed, as it persisted in being a dirty little river town, and couldn’t/wouldn’t rise above its underachieving history.

In retrospect, yes. Even before Facebook existed, my friend was exactly right.

In two months, we can expect Donald Trump to win the city of New Albany by at least 20 points, and if Trump manages to secure re-election, the first emissary likely to arrive in our bare city will be Ben Carson of HUD, to be welcomed by our Democratic adfarm-near-me/">ministration and given the ceremonial role of pushing the button to ignite the implosion of low-income housing at Riverview Tower.

Local progressives will say absolutely nothing, because they’re not progressive. The Dixiecrats will chortle with delight, chugging their Lites.

Somewhere, a dog will bark.

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Recent columns:

August 27: ON THE AVENUES: Structural racism, white fragility, and my old school.

August 20: ON THE AVENUES: When love and hate collide – or, my father and the governor.

August 13: ON THE AVENUES: In My Merry Oldsmobile.

August 6: ON THE AVENUES: Surrender.

ON THE AVENUES: There, there. People are dying, so you may have to wait until 2021 for your pork chop sandwich.

Who ever thought that forty years of narrow selfish leadership of academic, corporate, and political institutions would lead to a population full of raw anger?
-- Matt Stoller

Last week militarized police and the National Guard units were deployed to disperse peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters using counter-insurgency techniques previously devised for use against "enemies" abroad.

This wasn’t sufficiently violent to suit President D. “Nero” Trump, who proposed using armed service regulars to attack American citizens and occupy their cities -- not unlike the Chinese did in Tiananmen Square in 1989, or the United States in Iraq 17 years ago.

Meanwhile in excess of 100,000 Americans have died from a mysterious novel virus, with the number of infections reaching upwards of 2,000,000. Between 30 and 40 million are unemployed, and taking these statistics into consideration over a meal of Olive Garden takeaway and hard seltzer, perhaps another 150 million of us have concluded (a) the virus doesn’t exist, or (b) if it does, it’s perfectly safe because FREEDOM, and (c) in any event the virus that is, or perhaps isn’t, was devised by pussy libtards in cahoots with the Chinese for use against OUR president, and this is why (d) blacks protesting perennial injustice should be crushed with surplus army gear, but whites objecting to science, protesting any semblance of justice for non-whites or failing the physical when attempting to join the local SWAT team must carry their own powerful armaments and weaponry anywhere they please as “penis proxies.”

(Credit LEO Weekly for “penis proxies.”)

Our Big Mac president recently embraced the aforementioned counter-insurgency techniques to have the way cleared for a photo-op at a church, holding a hastily borrowed Bible aloft, upside down, in his best choreographed attempt to appear engaged.

The same half of the population that has rejected science because STOCK MARKET GODDAMMIT applauded vigorously, pausing only to blame blacks for their own targeting by the militarized police.

Amid the bleating and babbling of those shaven-headed old white guys with sour expressions whose monster trucks now routinely travel 50 mph down Spring Street, safe in the knowledge that our own municipal enforcement mechanisms remain in hibernation deep within Jeff Gahan’s agoraphobic “pretend leader” bunker, I’ve spent the past few days wondering about the precise level of violent injustice required to bring forever snoozing New Albanians out into the streets to protest.

Now I know the answer: cancel Harvest Homecoming and watch as the yokels finally are stirred to action.

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The Harvest Homecoming cancellation announcement came Wednesday evening from the organization’s governing committee. Apparently the officers embraced rationality in consideration of a plain fact grasped by virtually anyone who has ever attended the festival, this being that almost every aspect of the event’s success relies on a high volume of humans, not a few of them drunk, all of them eating, squeezed into relatively small areas of streetscape.

Most of the time this business plan works out as intended. However, 2020 emphatically is not “most of the time.” The committee rightly fed the facts into the public health calculator of spacing and hygiene necessary to contain the pandemic, crunched the numbers, and found -- alas -- that 2 + 2 still equals 4.

Harvest Homecoming will return in 2021, by which time the global health situation probably (although not necessarily “will”) be clearer. Caution? It’s the most balanced attitude toward unknown factors, and something not to be confused with fear.

Of course, as FDR reminded us, we have nothing to fear except being deprived of amenities and diversions guaranteed to us by the United States Constitution … or the Board of Public Works and Safety, at the very least.

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Within seconds of the meeting’s final gavel, howls of Internet fury arose from the troll-in-the-mirror narcissists, who figuratively descended on Harvest Homecoming with eggs, toilet paper and so very much mangled syntax.

Seeing as I’m a connoisseur of humanity’s limitless capacity for illogical behavior, I risked the rhetorical rubber bullets cascading into a group of innocent bystanders (namely, Harvest Homecoming’s volunteer workers, who don’t deserve the abuse heaped on them by hordes of sheer dullards), strapped myself into several layers of PPE and dove into the social media scrum, only to be deafened by what sounded like hundreds, perhaps thousands of indignant, starving crows.

Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me Me

You might say it was “enchanting.” Here are several examples.

ML (works at Humana): This is so overblown at this point.

BNB (hospital worker): So you can have thousands of people go protest but we can't have harvest???

WJ: maybe , you should have asked the people of New Albany about the cancellation of the harvest homecoming. before doing it. let us decide if , we want to take the chance or not.

BH (maintenance technician): 250,000 have died from covid...1.2 million died from the flu in 2017...🤔

MD (says he’s a University of Louisville graduate): This is dumb why not wait and see if this thing goes away! Cases she almost gone to zero!

TC: Man. Watch the downtown New Albany business district go belly up now. This was a BIG MONEY deal to a lot of businesses.

What in the name of rolled oysters, elephant ears and frozen chocolate covered bananas is the matter with you people?

I never thought I'd be defending the decision-making of the Harvest Homecoming committee, with which I’ve often differed, but it isn’t hard to put yourself in their shoes. Most of Harvest Homecoming’s governing committee members and volunteers are multi-generational lifers. Love the festival or hate it, they work throughout the year in preparation, and take their tasks very seriously.

This decision to cancel Harvest Homecoming in 2020 almost surely was the hardest thing these folks have ever had to do outside the heavy issues we all face in own personal lives. It’s mind-boggling to accuse them of taking their responsibilities lightly. This whole process must have been traumatic for them.

Did any of you think of THAT?

Here YOU are, masquerading as a “fan” of Harvest Homecoming until the going gets choppy and your field of vision narrows to the chief malady of our nation, in big-ass block letters: ME ME ME ME ME ME ME.

Guess what, doofus: this may come as a surprise, but there are times when it isn’t about YOU; rather, there are times when it needs to be about all of US.

The Harvest Homecoming committee is being responsible and looking to the festival’s long-term prospects. That's savvy. Not everyone hereabouts rejects science, and it’s really hard to imagine big crowds turning out his year. If the committee goes fast, some of the throng will be back this year. If it goes slow, probably most of them will return in 2021.

To be fair, we’ve also heard from non-profit organizations as well as for-profit vendors, for whom Harvest Homecoming is a primary annual revenue source. There’ll be pain, just as there has been for the food and drink business. Losing St. Patrick’s Day wasn’t exactly enjoyable, nor being closed entirely or operating for more than two months on far less than 50% of customary sales volume.

It's what had to be done for the greater good. As with the pandemic writ large, perhaps the pain will lead to fresher thinking. Is there anything that can be done a little bit each day of the year to offset the risk of depending on just one week?

Must we go to the office five days a week, or can we work from home for three?

Is it really necessary for you to spit in my face while extolling the selfless virtues of The Donald?

As for the experts, well, if you’ve never been charged with thinking past the distance to where your car is parked, or planning activities for a few hundred thousand of your closest friends as opposed to heading down to the stop ‘n’ rob for a Big Gulp or three, then you may wish to get a life.

I’m told you can buy one at Amazon, although be forewarned.

The life you buy for yourself might be manufactured in China -- and then what?

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Recent columns:

May 28: ON THE AVENUES: The late, great Lee Kelly -- by Matt Nash.

May 21: ON THE AVENUES: Godlessness in defense of heathens, infidels, idolaters, atheists, non-theists, irreligious people, agnostics, skeptics, heretics and apostates.

May 14: ON THE AVENUES: Food is my friend, but please, I'm no foodie.

May 7: ON THE AVENUES: COVID tolls for thee -- whatever, so hurry and get your ass back into this seat.

In which we learn about orthorexia.

Did you know that orthorexia is "the unhealthy obsession with ironically, eating healthy"?

I tend to view the veggie/vegan paradigm in the same way as localism. It's about shift. We can better the planet and our own bodies by shifting toward a plant-based diet, and away from three daily helpings of super-sized meat, and the shift needn't be of fanatical dimensions in order to make a difference.

Shift happens.

An ex-vegan takes on the trolls ... A blogger's admission creates a backlash -- and helps raise awareness of orthorexia, by Mary Elizabeth Williams (Salon)

Giving up veganism can have serious consequences. There are all the threats and trolling to consider, for instance.

Jordan Younger runs a popular lifestyle blog called the Blonde Vegan. The 23-year-old describes herself as a “yoga junkie, passionate writer, fitness freak, smoothie addict, dream chaser, cleanse creator, founder of TBV Apparel, wannabe food photographer & lover of all things health related.” But late last month, in a candid post for her site, she explained one thing she wasn’t anymore, and how she was “transitioning away from veganism.”

Bill Lamb on bicyclists: Tax 'em, kill 'em -- whatever.

It isn't as though WDRB's Bill Lamb hasn't shamelessly trolled about bicycling in the past. He has. Case in point: The 'Ville Voice: "Bill the Bike Bully."

With the topic being "my car as shriveled phallus extension," The 'Ville Voice's Rick Redding comes in right on cue following yesterday's venomous NAC exchange on bicycling, automotive traffic, and which one makes us more American in the eyes of our patriotic countrymen.

That's right; five long years ago, when Redding still manned the controls at The 'Ville Voice. Now Lamb is back, stoking the road rage brigade, presumably empowered by the knowledge that that there is no known record hereabouts of drivers being prosecuted for killing cyclists under any circumstances.

Now, I hear the Metro Council is considering an ordinance that would tax cyclists through a licensing fee. This is a good idea. First, there is a cost of painting all these new bike lane.

In New Albany, we can't even "afford" striping for automotive lanes, much less bikes, but I digress This time around it's Jake Payne applying the rhetorical mascara to Lamb's wizened visage.

Just when you thought Bill Lamb couldn’t get more disconnected from reality… Taxing cyclists because he’s not man enough to control himself or his emotional reactions. What’ll get his manties in a twist next? This city should be paying cyclists because it gets cars off our already crumbling streets. The environmental benefit is just an added bonus. [WDRB]

"Start a FC Chatter and keep your nonsense there - we don't need it here."

That's a bit premature, isn't it?

The no-tolls contagion is spreading to Clark County Chatter, and already, minutes after I posted about it, someone wants to kick me out of the room.

What is it about folks 'round here not wanting to talk 'bout things?

Is there a delete button I can push?