My friend, a longtime chef who has been sharing a plethora of her popular recipes on social media for the last month, just picked up her first randomly-hateful troll.
Normal, you say; everyone who posts anything gets them. Yes, but this one took care to dodge every single rationale and make an end run to the wrong goal, so I had to look a little closer.
Any number of critiques would have been relevant. He could have complained about the recipe, an ingredient she recommended, her presentation, her direction, even her voice on video if it somehow bothered him. He could have said any of these things and sounded like he had at least paid attention, given it a try, and been disappointed.
But no, this pathetic little troll had to dive in and attack her cultural heritage. Never mind her lifetime of American citizenship, her flawless, natural English, or — crucially — her kind heart, sharp mind, and tasty recipes.
No, he had to dig in just enough to learn where her family hailed from and try to blame her for that. Block and move on, you say? Right, right… but one thing still nags at me here.
This coward (who, of course, couldn’t be bothered to post even a realistic screen name, just an assortment of letters and numbers) tried to attack her for a literal accident of birth. And I feel sure that he is proud of his own accidents of birth, because the vast majority of haters I’ve encountered in my life so far tend to be white, male, US citizens, NONE of which they chose or could have controlled. But attempting to shame a woman who is not of strict Caucasus descent for where she or her parents (also US citizens and terrific people) were born? That’s irrational AND hypocrisy.
Racism has always confounded me, though a deeper dive into that belongs in a different blog post. But the shortest version is that people give you SO MANY ways to evaluate whether you want to be around them, that nation of origin doesn’t even have to enter the equation.
No one is perfect, but people can only control their words and their actions. Skin color, language of birth, PLACE of birth — not even close.
Choosing to ignore the delicious, healthy recipe is his loss; not everyone likes the same things, and I don’t care how many people scroll past the recipe without commenting. But people who value themselves can just shrug and move on if it doesn’t interest them.
Someone who takes time out of their day to seek out a hashtag from a cultural food dish, then stops to randomly attack the person who posted it for literally no other reason, is clearly someone who hates himself, too. And why would anyone listen to a fool like that?