Do You Hear The People Snark?

Yesterday I listened to a little bit over an hour of a notable personality whom I’ve always liked speaking on a podcast. It was not fun; in between long and pompous announcements about how he was an “open-handed moderate” unlike “right-wing” “fascists” I got to hear about how he was so much smarter than religious people. This fact–the stupidity of religious people–was a frequent spice to the conversation, adding a little-needed extra dose of pomposity. About 45 minutes into this we were told that he does what he does because he “just enjoys people.” At that point my main thought was “do you LISTEN to yourself? You enjoy half the people, at most.”

A bit later on I was looking something up–truth be told I was looking up opinions on this person–and ended up at a website I rarely visit. This collective blog aimed at conservatives is a popular place for sharp-tongued articles that repeatedly use “liberal” and “leftist” and “Hollywood” as demeaning and dismissive adjectives. I realised it was a nice picture of two sides of the same coin.

I’m not sure when it started, but I know during the last 24 years of my lifetime it has been de rigeur to mock and belittle the people you disagree with–not only the points on which you disagree, but also everything else about the person. I’m fairly sure we didn’t invent this method of discourse but I’m also pretty sure it’s gained an obscene amount of traction via the things we did invent–Twitter, FaceBook, blogs.

If you page back through this blog a few years you will likely find things I wrote that have that same sort of equally-disdainful acid dripping from them. I’m not proud of that but I’m glad they’re here because it’s proof that people can grow out of that, can grow in Christ and learn to practice faith proactively.

There’s a very popular Christian blogger whose blog I do not give attention or press, so I’m not going to link it here. But he’s popular largely because he takes this same tactic. If someone does something he doesn’t like or agree with he not only has to tell you what he disagrees with he has to call names, say inconsiderate things and generally practice cruelty. This happens a lot because people tell themselves “anybody who does this stupid thing doesn’t deserve respect.” But I’ll say right now that if we are practicing Christianity we need to take First Corinthians 13 very seriously. If we don’t speak with love we are only putting more discordant noise into the air. Snark is funny. Snark gets hits. Snark goes viral. But like real virii, it infects the cell it attaches to, turns that cell into a septic destroyer of the body and then rages from cell to cell, growing in poison.