I'm shutting down Google+ for the night and quite possibly for the weekend. Why? This stupid #gifwars thing people are so proud of. This Adam Black guy said he doesn't like gifs and now everyone is mass trolling him. Having been mass trolled like this I can relate to him easily enough. Have an opinion and the collective might of Google+'s lower class denizens jump on a bandwagon. I just saw a post where someone wanted to jump on board and had to get clarification she was tagging the proper Adam Black. She wasn't even connected to him ! Nor was she a part of the original discussion. She just wanted to follow the herd. When I called her out of it she claimed, "one gif doesn't make a troll." Perhaps not, but she's contributing to a larger troll effort. One straw doesn't break the camel's back, but thousands will. So, tonight, Google+ disgusts me. It probably will tomorrow as well. And possibly Sunday. I gave up Google+ for two months this spring
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Of course, as a college professor I studied social media so I had a bit of a leg up when it came time to actually - you know - use it.
And I'm using the term "professor" loosely .. as in "somebody who teaches college" and not the "rank attained by surviving tenure for the requisite number of years." My highest faculty rank was "adjunct" which falls somewhere above "teaching assistant" and somewhere below "human being."
That reality probably had some bearing on my decision to become a full time writer rather than pursue a career in academe.
Just to be clear.