What kinksters can learn from Mormons
Danger looms near. There is a protest, or a propaganda piece, or some new legestation, that threatns to destroy sexual freedom. This has to be stoped! The call is out out to form a counter protest, or realese a statement of our own, or an urgent need to call your represinitive today to make sure the bill dosent pass. Only through the unrelenting diligence of the kink comunity working together as a group will this threat be vanquished.
The justification for this corse of action is compelling. Those who opress sexual freedom are just bullies and they will back down if we just stand up to them. Out comes the quote misatributed to Edmund Burke of “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Its obvious that SOME form of action is nessasary to halt this atack on sexual freedom. If we do nothing then the oposition will just get louder and louder and remain unchecked and they will never ever go away.
Here is the dirty little secret of political activism : yes they will go away.
Activists are quite proud of the disruptions they cause. They buy into the ‘great man’ theory of history rather than admiting the techonological and social trends that afre the cause of most of history. They look at Columbus and Newton and Hitler not as enevedabal products of their time, but rather the embodement of power that could shape the path of history by shear force of their own will. They believe that rebels shape the world, so they try and be rebles themselves.
In short, they are trolls. They witness the disruption that their actions cause and believe this increases their status. Now they might not be seeking to increase their own status for purely egotistical reason. They just honestly believe that in order to ‘change the world’ there must be turbelence and strife.
The best way to deal with trolls is to ignore them. Some will move on to other places where they will get the reaction they seek. Some will retreat quitely, afraid that the silence they recive is proof that they arnt actualy the history shaping rebles they like to think they are. But to treat a troll as a bully, and to assume that if you stand up to them they qwill back down, is a loosing proposition. The more youy stand upo to them, the more convinced they are that they are having an impact.
Last week, HBO tried trolling the Mormon church. Its show ‘Big Love’ has from its begining attempted to be intentionaly contreversal. Goad the mormans into outrage and the result is huge ratings as people line up to see what the contreversy is about. This weeks publicity stunt was to violate privacy by showing depely personal and sacret elements of mormon cerominies. “Watch out!” came the news from press statements “As soon as the mormons see this all hell will break loose. Its going to be contyreversal! Be sure to tune in and watch all the contreversy!”
Their actual response, however, didnt live up to the amount of contreversy the shows producers had hoped for.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as an institution does not call for boycotts. Such a step would simply generate the kind of controversy that the media loves and in the end would increase audiences for the series.
Of corse this didnt stop, or even slow down, the producers of the show who still insisted that they were conterversal and were creating a big uproar. Even going so far as to offer a public apology. “We are sorry for making such a huge mess” when the only people thinking they caused a huge mess was they themselves. But the mormon church themselves already knew “dont feed the trolls” and had ignored the whole issue. Corectly catagorizing it as a cheep publicity stunt that will quickly be forgoten.
Sexual rights advocates would learn well from their example. Joey Olgesby would still be a totaly unknown nobody if it hadent been for every gay rights blog in existance splashing the Donnie Davies videos on their front page.