Will’s World: Trolls take a toll when farming meets Facebook
Will Evans © Richard Stanton I don’t subscribe to the “everything was better in the good old days” way of thinking, though I realise it’s easy to fall into that seductive trap.
Nostalgia for a time when you were young and vigorous, had few responsibilities, no aching joints, and a bladder that didn’t wake you up in the early hours every morning is perfectly understandable.
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About the author
But being the optimistic person that I am, I consider life for those of us fortunate enough to inhabit this wonderfully eccentric and beautiful country of ours right here and now in 2024, to be, on the whole, pretty darn good.
Sure, there are things I’d improve given the power to do so, but for people who are willing to work hard there are countless opportunities for advancement, our children get a good standard of free education, our health service is still, despite all the current challenges, the envy of the world, and perhaps most pertinently for this column, we have some of the cheapest food available anywhere.
Whether that’s good for us as producers is highly debatable, but we’re also consumers like everyone else, and I certainly wouldn’t appreciate paying a lot more for our groceries every week – our numerous daughters are eating us out of house and home as it is. Perhaps that’s a paradox for another day, though.
Moth to the flame
Having said all that, there is an aspect of modern society, and a specific section within it, that I dislike intensely, and yet am absolutely fascinated by – it’s the people who regularly comment below news articles on Facebook.
To clarify, I don’t mean individuals who contribute intelligently and politely, though they’re a distinct rarity anyway.
No, I’m talking about the kind of shouty, experts-in-everything, incessant bores that, way back before social media was invented, you heard from only in the letters section of The Daily Mail, or on Points of View. “Disgruntled of Bognor Regis” – you know the sort; there’s not one of them you wouldn’t try to lose early doors on a stag do.
I shouldn’t look, I know this. It isn’t good for my mental health, blood pressure, or faith in humanity, and instead I should just blissfully scroll on by. But like a moth to the flame, I can’t help being drawn in.
The latest occurrence was this week below an article from that august publication The Shropshire Star with the alluring headline “Farm near Oswestry wants to erect two new buildings to house 500 cows”.
Farming, and local to me. What chance did I have? Of course I was going to succumb to the clickbait.
I could see there were 171 comments and, resigned to the fact that I have zero willpower, I took a deep breath, donned my imaginary hazmat suit to protect me from the inevitable toxicity, and in I went.
Pig ignorant
Ladies and gentlemen, if I came for ignorant and ill-informed opinions, then I was emphatically not disappointed.
It ranged from someone ranting: “Why are we housing cows when there are people who are homeless?”, to a man who I’m going to call “Dick” angrily proclaiming that: “This is a factory, not a farm!”, and more words to that effect.
Quite how Dick surmised this from a single headline and a following short paragraph is a mystery.
I was fleetingly tempted to say something about that aforementioned cheap food supply, and how fortunate we all are to have the farmers who produce it, but then I remembered that famous George Bernard Shaw quote and quickly logged off.
“Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty, and the pig likes it.”