The Perils of Pinterest

Y'all are on Pinterest, right?

Because it's pretty much the most awesome thing to ever hit the internet!

If you're not on it, let me explain.

You know how you'd go over to your best friend's house as a kid,
 and you'd look at cool stuff around her mirror?

There would be pictures of cute boys...

... and funny cartoons...

... and inspirational sayings.

(I found the EXACT SAME weird poster of this saying that I had as a teen, 
but it was on someone's Flikr so I couldn't use the image.  Check it out, though!)

Well, Pinterest is like that, to the millionth degree!
It's about half the internet, putting things up around their virtual mirrors!

Anyhoo, one of the pins on Pinterest I put around my mirror, 
or "boards" as they're called, is this one:

Yeah, the writer behind the wildly popular dystopian trilogy
also wrote for the gentle Little Bear cartoon!

Interesting, huh?

Well another pinner begged to differ:

"Simple, she watched Battle royal. [sic]"

.
.
.
.
.

Ooooookay.

Now, I am not unaware of the controversy behind the similarities between Battle Royale 
and The Hunger Games.  But as I replied:

"People have been pitted against each other for others' amusement since forever. I will take Ms. Collins at her word that she got her idea after flipping between reality TV and the Iraq coverage, and listening to her father's accounts of Viet Nam."

No biggie, right?

But then!  The same poster wrote:

"Youre [sic] whats [sic] wrong with the world."

What?  What?!?

Not fandom, or Pinterest, or even the Wide, Wide World of Web, but

THE WOOOOOORLD.

Now I get hyperbole, but it's like I thought we were playing badminton...

and she decided heck, no, it's STEEL CAGE DEATH MATCH TIME.

Was my tone in my follow-up post a bit teacher-ish?
Yeah, I'll grant that.

I am a teacher, after all.

But what should I do now?
Just leave our interaction at that?

Well, as anyone who has spent more than twenty minutes interacting
via their computers knows,
while rule number ONE of the internet is

"Just because it's on the internet, it doesn't mean it's true,"

rule number TWO is

"Don't feed the trolls."

But this second rule makes me crabby.

I feel like it gives the power to the troll, not me.
I mean, they're a TROLL, right?
Big and powerful and scary!

So in situations like these, I instead turn to the ever-helpful and unflappable Miss Manners.

In her book Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior,
she said that when someone behaves completely outside the realm of good manners,
there is but one solution:

The Cut Direct.

According to Miss Manners, The Cut Direct means you don't argue with the cut-ee,
you don't talk to her,
you don't even acknowledge her existence.

"What?  Does someone speaketh to me?  I hear naught."

Although my behavior is exactly the same as a person who has chosen
 "to not feed the troll,"
somehow it is much easier for me not to get into a 
"No, you're the poopyface!!" argument with a poster
when I'm reminding myself that I'm practicing 
The Cut Direct.

And that's what I've done with Miss Bad Grammar Smartypants.