And So the Trolling Begins

You’re nobody till somebody hates you. That’s life on the web.

I deleted the first comment on my first Substack post. Some incredibly witty anonymous person dubbing himself “Peter Venkman” wrote, “I think other white people have travelled to exotic places and wrote about their amazement.”

Ah. Yes. Good eye. I am indeed white. You, sir, are a keen observer of the human condition. Well played, indeed! Was it my SPF 60 dependency and freckles that gave it away?

I’m the “I walked one kilometre home from a bar in the Yucatan in August and passed out from heat exhaustion and had a sunburn for four days” kind of fish-belly white.

Guilty as charged.

You know who else has travelled to far away lands and written about their amazement and culture shock? Anyone from any country, of any colour, anywhere on Earth.

Because that’s what travel is about.

Whether you’re Black or brown or white, travel is about challenging your assumptions and getting out of your comfort zone.

I can’t change the fact that I grew up white in Canada in the 1980s. But it doesn’t mean I don’t have a valid point of view on the world. It just means my point of view is, well, my SPF 60-dependent POV.

You know what would be sad? If creatives started looking at the world with a perspective of “well, _______ has been written about before, so I can’t write about that.”

Yes, Shakespeare nailed a version of love and romance in Romeo & Juliet, yet we’ve had over five centuries of other love-related works in artforms of all kinds. We don’t say “love’s been done before; you can’t create art about that anymore.”

We recognize that this book/movie/song/painting is yet another perspective on love. With 7.8 billion people on the planet, I assure you, there’s space for a few perspectives on any given topic. Garden State, Casablanca, If Beale Street Could Talk, Pride & Prejudice — they’re all “love stories” that have been done in some way before.

My point of view or tone of voice isn’t everyone’s taste. If I’ve learned anything from 17 years of blogging, I’ve learned that much at least.

I’m not pretending I’m some Great White Savior or that I’m wiser about the world around me than everyone else.

I’m a writer who writes what I know – how I’ve seen some of the world and what I think about it. Because writers do that.

Do we need more voices of colour to be celebrated and lifted up? Of course we do. But don’t we all deserve to have a voice on the world around us? Of course we do.

If you don’t like it, hey, there’s the door.

There’s all kinds of great writers out there and I’m sure one of them has a voice that resonates with you. REALLY! That’s the beauty of art and creativity. Go find the voice that feels like it’s speaking to you directly. It’s out there somewhere.

I have no illusions about what a gloriously talent-filled world we live in, and I love that there’s room enough for many voices at the table. But don’t think for a minute that I’ll put up with trash-talking me or my perspective.

Yeah, I deleted that jerk’s comment because this is my soapbox and that’s my prerogative. And I’ll delete the next anonymous jerk’s comment too because I’m too old for that crap. Hatred and pettiness is unnecessary.

I have no patience for the cowardice behind anonymous trolling.

Want to rail against the prevalence of white perspectives in a multicultural world? Go start your own blog. Really. Bring that to the table. But be better than just another trash-talking anonymous troll.

Have the courage to put your name to your perspective and make it a part of our collective cultural fabric. I’ll support that all day long and twice on Sundays.

All I can say is this: I’ll never pretend I understand cultures that I’ve just passed through. I may understand of some of the historical factors that make them who they are, but I can never, ever understand the effects that time and history have had on who they are.

As an example, I can tell you about having a hysterectomy in Albania, maybe give you some sweeping oversight to the condition and the experience, but you’ll never understand the minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour experience I had inside my brain, in my soul. And I’ll never understand your adversaries in your life on a cellular level either.

Just like I can look at Albania’s last century of deposed royalty, Nazi invasion, the following four decades plus of autocratic rule and oppression, the fall of communism, the civil war, and the slow acclimation to capitalism… but I’ll never understand the psychological condition of having lived through any of that. I can imagine, but I won’t know.

I’ll never understand how Cambodia overcame an illegal bombing campaign and a genocide that saw their own people slaughter 25 percent of their population, and how they live today as one of the kindest or poorest places I’ve visited.

I will always, always be an outsider looking in. But guess what?

Sharing thoughts about these things – including factual details about their history – is a good way to start dialogues. We need to discuss things, to understand history, to understand each other, if we’re ever to overcome things like racism, war, populism, financial disparities, and whatever else keeps us apart today, or the similarities that bind us together.

Anyone who thinks I believe myself to be more important or better than others is a fool. I’m as riddled with insecurity and doubts about myself and my worth as anyone else is. But I know the math, I know I’ve had experiences many folks will never have, and I’ve earned the right to say a thing or two about it, as long as I remember that this is my perspective and not a global truth. And I’m happy if YOU remember that too.

I’ve been able to contrast my observations from being on the ground in so many different nations. I’ve seen the effects of climate change and globalism and commercialism as how it plays out across borders. Sure, from my white Canadian perspective, but that’s the only perspective I’ve got.

For what it’s worth, the one thing I know that sets me apart from most who write about places is I spent four years non-stop immersed in other people’s lives and their homelands. And I’m proud of that. It wasn’t easy — but it was worth it. I’m still paying for it, financially and physically, but I’d do it all again, knowing what I know now.

If you’ve got constructive contradictions or corrections to offer, I’d love to hear them.

If you’ve got interesting other perspectives to contrast mine, please bring them up.

But I’m under no obligation to give an audience to pettiness, insults, or belittling. No one is.

Thanks for reading. Have a fabulous day.

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No matter where I went in the world, the one thing we all have in common is that we all stare out into the vastness, lost in thought about us and our place in the world. I can’t fathom that talking about each of our experiences could ever be a bad thing. That any troll thinks they can sully that, well, not on my watch, bro. Woman enjoys a moonrise in Palermo, Sicily.