Two men, one bigoted and one fair, engage in a screaming contest.
Who wins?
Trick question. If you’re screaming, you aren’t fair.
Yet screaming all too often makes its way into everyday arguments where simple solutions — or even educational benefit — may come as soon as the decibel dam is lifted.
Free Speech Plaza is a beautiful example, especially on what some students have come to call “Crazy Christian Tuesdays.” While the title serves to pigeonhole Christians as thoroughly as the preachers there deserve it, the events have garnered a fervent following among students — especially those who wish to voice the counterpoint.
Commence the screaming competition.
Indeed, it is difficult to engage in mannered conversation with a man hell-bent on your damnation, but consider this:
It is equally impossible to judge a man with 30 college students screaming at him as to judge a student with 10 Pentecostals condemning him. While I can neither condone nor exclusively condemn either group, the conclusion is simple.
They’re all trolls to me.
The designation “troll” rose first on the Internet as a term for people who post, comment, what-have-you with the sole intention of provocation and offense. The term, it turns out, has always existed — we typically just call them assholes.
And the traits can be found on both ends of “Crazy Christian Tuesdays.”
While Brother Jed Smock is condemning hand-holding before marriage (because it can lead to “penile penetration”), students vault questions such as, “What about butt sex?”
They shout obscenities, fashion signs to out-picket the religious assault and sing the
introduction to “Fresh Prince of Bel Air.”
Both sides utilize the same tactics: drowning out the competition with shouting, using numbers to overpower a discussion, reduction to absurd arguments (or in the picketers case, reductio ad deus), posing unanswerable questions and stating opinion as fact.
Moreover, trolls are often pretentious, uninterested in responses and short in stature with large, hairy feet.
But all of these traits indicate the troll’s kryptonite: individual communication.
Trolling doesn’t work without a high ground. For the street preachers, the high ground is religion, or more specifically, divine right. For the rude respondents, the high ground is science — or logic, specifically.
It simply happens that one of these high grounds is fabricated.
Other high grounds can include non-falsifiable arguments (claims which can neither be scientifically proven true nor false, as many religious claims), anonymity and group support.
But only once the barrier is broken and you’ve got the man one on one may judgments be made.
A year ago, when a Pentecostal group hosted the week’s edition of “Tuesdays,” I decided to speak with one of the younger members personally. The 15-year-old told me I was going to hell about as politely as one can, but I believe we surprised each other with our collective patience.
The subsequent argument I shared with his father — argument in the neutral, educational sense, rather than the common, heated conception — was also polite. His argument against perceiving the world with only our senses was a logical fallacy, as it is scientifically impossible to reduce past primary senses, but regardless, the man heard me out, as I did him.
Unfortunately, such an experience is hard to come by. It can be overwhelming to hold onto hopes of polite conversation when a man you’ve just met swears you’ll be tortured in a lake of fire for eternity — especially when you forget the platitude and recognize the magnitude of such a claim.
But one mustn’t compromise intellectual integrity and the sanctity of debate by succumbing to sophomoric countermeasures.
Pick your battles. If there is no opportunity to speak the truth with the justice and clarity it deserves, don’t force it. The battle is already lost.
There will be no winner in a screaming contest.
Clayton Crockett is a 20-year-old international studies sophomore from Lafayette. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_ccrockett.
 
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Contact Clayton Crockett at [email protected]