Fishing isn’t really my thing.
Sitting on a boat on a beautiful day? Sign me up. A beer in one hand and a rod and reel in the other — that’s got a nice ring to it. I can even romanticize the feeling of, after a long, patient wait, a fish finally biting down on the bait. That sharp bend of the rod, the line going instantly taut. How idyllic.
My real issues come with the next part.
You finally pull that submarine beast up and out of the water and … now what? I have to get that thing unhooked? And you’re telling me it’s a half inch too short or too long — “Too long?” What a world! — and now I have to keep it alive through this whole process? No thank you. The idea of fishing is enticing, but the reality of it is just a little too … real for me.
The best fishing trips I’ve been on are the ones where the folks running the boat bait the line for you, and when you finally pull one up, they take it off for you. Lazy man’s fishing. Bingo!
Many of these charter boats use a technique called “trolling.” The idea is simple: drag a few baited lines or lures behind a moving boat. The motion entices predatory fish. Is this a form of cheating? Some ardent anglers may argue so. But I think it’s just making the most of our God-given intelligence.
This method of fishing is also where we get the modern use of the word trolling, as in internet trolling.
The internet and trolling are almost synonymous today. You just can’t have one without the other.
Like all things in this fallen world, trolling exists on a spectrum.
On one end of that spectrum, you have the ugly kind: harassment, obscenity, or genuine cruelty. I don’t condone any of that. I don’t even consider that trolling.
On the other end, however, you get the good stuff.
This kind of trolling involves baiting social media scolds — those who seem to live online with the simple goal of chiding others. Often, these scolds prey on the extremely trivial. They miss the forest for the trees. That’s where the white-hat-wearing trolls can strike. And when they do so successfully, it is beautiful.
Local Facebook groups are full of the scolds I speak of. Naturally, they are also fertile ground for trolls.
We are blessed — others might say cursed — with some top-notch trolls right here in our midst. When the trolling is done well, it’s one of the purest forms of comedy there is.
I am guilty of being somewhat of a troll from time to time myself. I should humbly add that I’m nowhere near the true masters of the art.
Two weeks ago, I wrote a column entitled “A Rockaway Times Exclusive.” Regular readers should have known something was up. I’m not exactly in the breaking news business. And even if you aren’t a faithful reader (shame on you!), after the first paragraph it should have become quite clear that I was, as usual, joking.
Not everyone appreciated the humor.
One reader even wrote to scold me for the article. Besides being tricked into thinking they were about to read some hard-hitting exclusive story, they took particular exception to one of my jokes. Clutching their pearls (I assume), they informed me that they were “disgusted” and “appalled” that I would make such a joke.
Receiving that email absolutely made my day. The fish had taken the bait. “Got ’em,” was all I could think. Those are exactly the types of harmless trolls I mean when I write in praise of trolling.
I’ll admit it: it’s a thin line. When does the blame shift from the trolled, for having so easily taken the bait — hook, line, and sinker — to the troller for going too far?
I think it’s pretty simple. As Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously wrote about obscenity: “I know it when I see it.”
If you’re going to swim around in the murky waters of social media — or, worse, the crystal-clear waters of The Rockaway Times — looking for people to unnecessarily admonish, don’t be surprised when you find yourself floundering around on the deck of a boat watching me hand my rod to the guy I’m paying to unhook my catches.
I even pay him extra to fillet the real keepers when we get back to the dock. There’s just nothing sweeter than the taste of a fresh catch.
