The Badlands: Life Imitates Internet

In this age of TMI, with so many ways to over-share our personal business in the fishbowl of the cyber-world, you'd think we'd have bridged the gap between our differences and in real life transformed into kinder and more cohesive life forms. But au contraire, mon ami. Methinks the divide has grown wider, with everyone grouping off into big cyber-cliques divided by race, sex, creed, proximity, disease and political persuasion. Strangely, we're quite cohesive in our disconnect.

We are the Selfie Stick nation. (Screen grab from Samsung commercial.)

One cannot begin to fathom the depth of the myriad subcultures that exist in cyberspace. The cliques range from those addicted to extreme couponing, to those searching for Big Foot or the Chupacabra. Then there is the seedy and dark side of cyberspace, where any or all of the 7 Deadly Sins are amply represented for the cruel and/or sexually depraved. If Asian sex tourism is your thing, you're not alone. If you never miss a chance to have sex doggie style while watching Scooby Doo and shouting, "Rooby Roo! ... Rooby RooOoo! ... Ruh Roh!" you'll probably find find at least another who shares your passion.

There is some positive and useful stuff out there. You can trace your lineage. You can  "visit" the grave site of a loved one who has passed, or start your family's own grave site memoir. You can even look at graves of the dearly departed famous on the site. (Fancy thee William Shakespeare? Or are you earnestly seeking Oscar Wilde?). You can verify almost anything with your geeky friend Google.

Unfortunately, these useful sites share a common problem with the seedy ones – trolls and bullies. Being the lowest of all forms, trolls hide under the blanket of anonymity to permeate every site out there with their cowardly hatred. It's this brazen online bullying that I think has crossed over into the real world.

We are a rude, thoughtless and self-absorbed lot. We kill beautiful, rare and majestic things for "sport".  RIP Cecil The Lion. And where are you Walter J. Palmer? We kill innocent things for no reason. I mean, what was the motivation for killing the harmless and lovable hitchhiking robot, hitchBOT? Seriously?! What gives? Way to rep it for the USA, 'bot bully!

HitchBOT Crime scene photo. He never made it out of "Killadelphia", as one Philly native said.

Customer service in far too many businesses is almost non-existent these days. Many times I feel like I'm interrupting someone's private dinner conversation when I'm checking out at the grocers. Sometimes there's no acknowledgement of the customer at all! When I get treated rudely trying to fulfill a necessity in life, I feel violated and dirty for having given the establishment any money at all.

People in traffic are rude or inconsiderately too preoccupied with texting and/or gabbing that they don't see how they're messing it up for the others around them, or how they endanger us all with their half-assed attention to the task of driving. There are those pants-on-fire jerks who zigzag in and out of lanes, switching back and forth between two lanes like a yo-yo, up this person's tail and up that person's tail. Their raison d'etré is to arrive at their destination one car sooner.

And then there is the equivalent to impatient road trolls and that is grocery line trolls. These are the impatient whiners who work passively-aggressively behind you to let their presence with their one item be known. I am keen to the signs and ignore them – the loud placement of their one item on the conveyor and their over-dramatic sighing, clearing throat and coughing spells. It is the quiet folk with one item that I let go ahead of me, those ones who don't feel entitled to cut in front of me.

Early one Sunday morning a few weeks ago I had an encounter with a impatient misogynistic jerk in the grocery line. There were only two lanes open as I got in line behind a man whose cart was loaded down while he waited for the woman ahead of him with the same. None of us qualified for the other lane that was open – the "15 items or less" lane. The elderly woman who came up behind me made a beeline for the 15-item line at the same time a man with a cane and a 12-pack of Blue Moon beer. A few people with only a few items went for the lane, which the cashier all-of-a-sudden closed.

My items were almost loaded onto the conveyor belt as I watched the mean cane man cut the elderly woman off with his stick as they both made their way back to my line. He said to the woman, "Uh, no. I was actually in line here first." A liar on top of it! No, he was not! Any man who cuts off an elder woman for any reason is not worthy of my acknowledgement. But, oh, how he tried to get my attention with the opening act of the passive-aggressive hem and haw and slapping down his 12-pack a few times for good measure. The moment my head was turned slightly in his direction to reach into my cart for the last items in the basket, he said, "Hey. Do you think I can cut in front of you? I've only got this."

"Ummm. No, you can't," I said, "I've been standing here for awhile and I have to go pee!"

I lied. I did have to pee but it wasn't that urgent of an issue at that moment. What he did to the woman and his whole aggressive demeanor was unacceptable to me. I may have been the first woman to tell him "no" because he mumbled curses, trying to get the people in line behind him to nod in agreement and form a small, temporary grocery line lynch mob. Then he spoke at me.

"Well, my dog thanks you."

*Screech!* OK, first of all, it was early morning and cooler than usual. Secondly, how dare that man's sense of entitlement, thinking the seas would part because he was thoughtless enough to drag his dog along?

"Well, and my bladder thanks you!" I replied. I could feel the man's seething hate vibe fry my backside. I imagined, given the right circumstances, he wouldn't have hesitated to deck me one.

It's gettin' hot in here...

As I loaded my groceries into my car, still in a kerfuffle about the whole encounter, a voice out of a passing mini SUV said, "I hope you piss yourself!"

What?! I was in such shock that I threw back choice words I never utter loudly in public: "Fuck you!" I threw in one of those Italian "up yours" hand gestures for good measure.

Yeah, I know, not very zen of me. I'm pretty much a conflict-avoiding peacenik but rudeness and bullying set me off! As a highly sensitive person, I was the victim of bullies from the fourth grade on through high school. It didn't stop there. Ten years later, I was bullied in college, though it didn't affect me much then because I was kicking butt winning prestigious scholarship after scholarship and receiving written and verbal accolades from the college higher ups. Professors loved me. I sat in the front in class, asked questions and participated in my higher education.

Then there were the battlefields of brutal workplaces. Even within the ranks of the professional, I was bullied. It affected my health and well-being. I'm not the only one who's been at the receiving end of workplace bullying. There are articles in popular business magazine addressing the issue like this one by Adam Piore for Bloomberg, "Taming The Workplace Bully. And there are entire websites based on books addressing the issue, like Tim Field's "Bully In Sight. 

I collected my composure as I burned the image of the mean man's mini SUV into my brain. As I drove home I thought of gentler responses I could've thrown at mean man that would cut a little deeper, like, "Your dog thinks you're an asshole!"