Trolling etiquette: Taking down somebody requires crafted skills

I could have labelled this piece ‘Famous Fallacies’ but I doubt anybody born this side of the millennium would have understood anything of a word that Aristotle so succinctly defined centuries ago. Also, chances are that trolling is progressively more rampant a form of dissing than say, writing a formal letter of woe.

But even in trolling certain etiquettes are to be followed and when a man decides to troll a woman, or more often, a mother’s basement-dwelling mollycoddled-to-psychological-damage sort of a male form of human life decides to unleash a grammatically incorrect attack in pidgin-English on a successful working woman, someone needs to tut-tut him back into his dark lair. But it would be unfair of me to come down so hard considering how most of them can’t afford correctional facilities even though, God knows, how badly they need them.

So dear men, the kind who give the rest of us a bad rap, here are a quick few pointers when trying to take on someone ten times your personality.

Keep it clean: Your point doesn’t become any stronger if you haul it up with crutches of crudity. If anything it becomes weaker. The point gets mired and maybe even lost in the hail of harshness. So, if you wish to take down someone, especially a lady, be a gentleman about it. Excuse yourself if you must interrupt and apologise first if you are going to disagree.

Don’t be sexist: To pull someone down because of their sex is the weakest form of rebuttal. If you must point out inadequacies at least stick to the topic at hand. Being man or woman don’t make anyone stronger or weaker. The one who resorts to such a line of attack however is definitely the one with lacking ammunition in his or her armoury.

Be objective: Critique what a person says, not what they look like or sound like while saying it. A lie told with a British accent isn’t more credible than someone who stutters the truth.

Don’t get personal: It is very impolite to insult someone’s persona while arguing their viewpoint. It’s like disagreeing with someone simply because you don’t like the clothes they are wearing. Or worse yet, suggesting that because they dress so, they are automatically less capable of commenting. conversely, just because a lady engineer happens to be attractive doesn’t discount her relevance to comment on mechanics.

Don’t mis-relate: I never get it when a superstar advertises underwear; unless their illustrious career has spanned years of prancing about in underpants, it bestows them with no special skill to comment on underwear any more than my regular grocer.

Don’t be macho: Might is certainly not right in a civil discussion. Just because you can talk louder or move your hands more vehemently doesn’t allow you to do so especially if it is all deployed as intimidation tactics. A woman with a soft voice has as much say on a matter as you if you are arguing on the same plane.

But the worst yet has to be conceding a point to someone just because she happens to be a woman. In other words, when you are debating, make no leeways for anything that detracts from the essence of the discussion. That said, if you are locking horns with someone precious over something irrelevant or insignificant, remember it is always better to lose a battle than to scale it up to a war.

The writer is a lover of wine, song and everything fine