The Instant Historian: The Sports Media Confronts Twitter Troll-dom

News occurs on Twitter. Twitter, invariably, becomes news. Trolls have caught the collective media gaze.

Media members have been dealing with trolls. Curt Schilling went full-on father after receiving disgusting tweets about his daughter. He will be Captain America, until someone delves into his social media usage. Female media members, fending off similar creeps on the regular, wondered why it took a loud man to raise the issue.

Jen Royle had to contact the Boston PD after trolls were tweeting about her apartment. Michelle Beadle’s FSU twitter takedown was precipitated by a foul tweet about Molly Knight. Jemele Hill told SI she gets told to go back to the kitchen and go back to Africa “every day.”

Twitter has also turned media into trolls. ESPN suspended Keith Olbermann four days for his weird feud with Penn State fans. We could hop down the rabbit hole about PSU fans using charity to troll Olbermann. But, the ultimate problem, as a contrite Olbermann himself acknowledged, was a public figure up after midnight using fellow human beings for “batting practice.”

Toss in the medium’s addictive quality. Sprinkle in some anxiety about the next brain fart making one’s life go Justine Sacco. The Instant Historian wonders why anyone uses Twitter. We may tweet about it.

Twitter will go after trolls. Blocking and muting only work ex post facto. Changes will inhibit freedom of expression. They will limit Twitter’s capacity to be an agent for social change. As in the rest of life, that’s a trade off most users would accept.

Of course, that logic assumes “trolls” are a fixed subset of users, rather than a natural outgrowth of the medium.

Anonymity on the Internet reduces inhibitions. The powerless hold a natural grudge against the powerful. Twitter offers direct access to the powerful. You can tell Curt Schilling how much you hate him. It’s a leap to horrible tweeting, but much shorter of one than would make any of us feel comfortable.

Twitter offers unfiltered connection with people. People, unfiltered, have the potential to be awful.

On Daniel Murphy… The Instant Historian has often wondered why professional athletes must weigh in on great societal matters. The answer provided has never been satisfactory.

Billy Bean, an openly gay ex-MLB player, visited the Mets as an inclusion ambassador. Incredibly, media members found a devout Christian in a MLB clubhouse. Mets infielder Daniel Murphy said the following to NJ.com.

"“I disagree with his lifestyle,” Murphy said. “I do disagree with the fact that Billy is a homosexual. That doesn’t mean I can’t still invest in him and get to know him. I don’t think the fact that someone is a homosexual should completely shut the door on investing in them in a relational aspect. Getting to know him. That, I would say, you can still accept them but I do disagree with the lifestyle, 100 percent.” “Maybe, as a Christian, that we haven’t been as articulate enough in describing what our actual stance is on homosexuality,” he said. “We love the people. We disagree the lifestyle. That’s the way I would describe it for me. It’s the same way that there are aspects of my life that I’m trying to surrender to Christ in my own life. There’s a great deal of many things, like my pride. I just think that as a believer trying to articulate it in a way that says just because I disagree with the lifestyle doesn’t mean I’m just never going to speak to Billy Bean every time he walks through the door. That’s not love. That’s not love at all.”"

Viewing being gay as a sinful lifestyle choice offends those who are gay and who view their sexual orientation as an inherent, essential part of their identity. Quibbling further, using “homosexuality” can be viewed as offensive, harkening back to gayness being treated as a clinical disorder.

But, the rush to condemn bypassed Murphy’s point which was, fittingly, not “articulate enough.” Murphy called the idea of the inclusion ambassador “forward thinking,” said he looked forward to meeting Bean and tried to say his Christian beliefs would not (and should not) get in the way of embracing a gay teammate. Which, when many Christians are seeking legal protection for a right to discriminate, should be a positive? The rest of that got lost in aggregation.

Murphy’s brand of tolerance, infused with common Christian belief, may not meet your ideal, but John Rocker he was not. Bean himself preached patience.

"I respect him, and I want everyone to know that he was respectful of me. We have baseball in common, and for now, that might be the only thing. But it’s a start. The silver lining in his comments are that he would be open to investing in a relationship with a teammate, even if he “disagrees” with the lifestyle. It may not be perfect, but I do see him making an effort to reconcile his religious beliefs with his interpretation of the word lifestyle. It took me 32 years to fully accept my sexual orientation, so it would be hypocritical of me to not be patient with others."

Predictably, Murphy will be sticking to baseball from here forward.

On Robot Journalists… The AP announced it would be using journalistic software to produce gamers. Beat writers thus joined delivery drivers and factory workers on the great list of the soon to be replaceable. We’ll all be there at some stage, but for the engineers and buzz-word spouting spreadsheet jockeys. But, until the dark day when snark and dry humor are reduced to algorithms, the Instant Historian pledges to make like Bobby Bowden’s animate, havoc-wreaking statue and keep raging.