You can’t seem to go anywhere these days without (sometimes literally as happened to me the other day) walking into someone with their head down scanning their mobile phone for the latest tweet, or Facebook/Instagram update.
I was a fairly early adapter so know all about the almost pathological need to stay up to date with friends, family and the interweb. I have also recently become a bit of a convert to Facebook’s various targeted Marketplaces.
Which leads me to a subject not strictly about motor racing this week, but worthy of a look at and think about, nevertheless, on-line abuse.
While I’ve obviously seen some of the venal, mean-spirited outpourings which pass for ‘just having my say’ in the comments section of various websites and blogs I regularly visit, the activity of people who have been labelled ‘trolls’ really only impacted on me directly recently when I made a throwaway comment in my sales ‘pitch’ for the Nissan RB30 engine I wanted to sell and thus had advertised on a number of FB Marketplaces.
The car it came out of was, indeed, an R31 Nissan Skyline (one of four I have now bought and parted out to keep my R31 drifter going) but the guy who had recently given it a top end rebuild had topped it off with a ‘Holden’ valve cover from a VL Commodore which – for two or three years shared the bulletproof SOHC 3.0 litre version of Nissan’s in-line six-cylinder RB20E engine with Aussie-assembled Skylines like mine.
My ‘sin’ according to the troll was a line in the ad copy which said something like (and I’m paraphrasing here) ‘don’t be offended Nissan lovers, I’ve got a spare Nissan-badged cover which will go with the engine when it sells.’
Which, by all accounts, sparked up Mr Holden-loving troll big time.
Rather than asking an intelligent question about the mileage, age or otherwise condition of the engine I was offering for sale he launched into a tirade about what a ‘Muppet’ I was for saying what I did, and didn’t I know the RB30 was in fact a Holden engine which had powered the Commodore for years…..
No I, er, didn’t know that because it patently isn’t true.
Fact #1. The RB30 was an Aussie market-only engine built by Nissan in Japan and exported to its and Holden’s plants in Australia for use as part of a joint venture of sorts which allowed Holden to update the Opel-based VK Commodore (with its olde-worlde carburetted OHV 1.9 litre four and HQ-based 202 six-cylinder engines) with two state-of-the-art fuel-injected SOHC 2.0 and 3.0 litre sixes, and Nissan to replace the R31 Skyline-based Pintara four cylinder with a gruntier 3.0 litre six cylinder version.
Fact#2. I put up a For Sale post NOT a General Discussion post.
Which is all very well and I would have to be pretty thin-skinned to take issue with being labelled a ‘Muppet.’ I have, after-all, been called much worse. I use the example not to ‘get my own back’ at Mr RB30 know-it-all. Rather it is to raise the very real issue of on-line abuse, or – as some people in the trade call it – cyber bullying.
My old Mum used to say that ‘if you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything.’ Twee, true, but the sentiment is there.
The following, for instance, is new Virgin Australia Supercars Championship points leader Shane Van Gisbergen’s take on it.
I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Shane since he was a kid and can tell you that there isn’t a straighter, more honorable guy in the Supercars paddock. It’s a tough, dog-eat-dog, world out there if you are a professional racing driver though, so you confuse his smiley, happy ‘everyday face’ with his thousand-yard-stare ‘race-face’ at your peril.
A fact that many keyboard critics, or (let’s not beat around the bush here) cyber-bullies fail to grasp.
So vehement, in fact, was the reaction to one of Shane’s recent moves on track, it prompted him to post the following on social media, along with a video condemning the practice of on-line abuse fronted by Aussie broadcaster Greg Rust.
Read it, and if you have ever burst a blood vessel and posted some rant (or made some spittle-flecked, comment) on your Twitter feed or your own, or a driver or series’ Facebook page, hide your head in shame.
“Cyber-bullying is a big issue and for whatever reason in our awesome sport it is more prevalent than ever.
Unfortunately it’s one of the main reasons I don’t post a lot nowadays, or interact as much.
Because as Greg Rust puts it best in this video (which you can search for here on October 25 2016 (https://www.facebook.com/supercars/videos/), if you wouldn’t say it to someone, don’t say it at all. Personally I do read all the comments, and amazingly a couple of the people who have written aggressive stuff toward me I then see them lining up in the autograph line a week or two later.
We are in a pretty special place as a sport right now, the competition is as tight as ever. And I personally am loving it.
But if you don’t support me, or the people I work with – that’s cool too, but please don’t abuse us over social media, that isn’t cool. For us, and our supporters who have to read it too.
99% of everyone is awesome but please don’t be the 1% that brings everyone down.”
Shane Van Gisbergen
To give you an idea of the sort of personal abuse Shane cops, read this recent missive from a bloke called Shannon from Queensland after the Eastern Creek night race.
“ Would be good if you could race cleaner. Most of the other drivers can pass without hitting the other car. Your teammate gets a bad sportsmanship flag for putting a wheel over a line, but you can basically push ppl off the track and get away with it. I just wonder, is it because of your, alleged, mental illness or just because you’re a dickhead. Either way, if you want to race like that go to NASCAR. You’re a disgrace.”
I’m sure you can imagine my response if I was on the receiving end of THAT. Yet rather than respond in kind Shane showed but a maturity in his measured response that makes me proud to consider him a mate.
To wit:
“I normally don’t respond to people like you, Shannon. I take exception to people who make fun of mental illness. To me that is the lowest of the low. My post last week was not for my benefit, it was for others I know who struggle with it a lot more than I do.
“Thankfully IDGAS what people say to me on a keyboard. But some of my friends and colleagues do. So please consider that before writing the awful stuff that you do.
“I’d also like to point out, and question, your said comment about push to pass last Saturday night? There was some tough aggressive racing, with Scott blocking and me bumping him, and Scott enjoying the battle. But the actual pass itself????
“Anyway. Please think about others before you write the ugly stuff you do.”
SVG
To which all I can think of to add are two words, ‘nail’ & ‘head.’
I could, of course, be completely and utterly wrong here. Perhaps every last one of us, despite having absolutely no idea about the reality of a situation bar seeing it on TV, has an absolute right to saddle up our high horses, vent our spleens via social media and to hell with the consequences?
What do you think?
Am I right? Am I wrong? Or am I a Muppet for even raising the issue?
Comments