The Upside-Down World of Online Mobbing When You Stand Up for the Truth
I need to vent. I had an interaction on reddit that completely flipped reality on me.
I worked for years as an archaeologist handling lithic materials. I know stones. On a rock post, someone gave a completely incorrect identification, made a juvenile dildo joke, and claimed they were a geologist. When I stepped in to correct them, everything instantly blew up in my face.
Instead of admitting he was wrong, this guy went into a panic-Googling spiral. He was completely grasping at straws, throwing out misinterpreted facts to back up his bad ID, picking on the fact I used your instead of "you're" and constantly shifting the goalposts to protect his ego.
The crowd completely validated his delusion. He got over 200 upvotes for spreading absolute nonsense, while I got hit with tons and tons of downvotes just for trying to provide the correct information. Because the mob took his side, they turned it into a personal, psychological assault on me. I woke up to patronizing comments questioning my mental health, telling me to get therapy, and saying, "You're the type of person who calls everyone a narcissist and toxic, aren't you?"
It feels like I'm living in an alternate reality where fragile egos are rewarded and truth-tellers are literally attacked by the crowd. When someone doubles down on a lie, rallies a crowd, flips the narrative, and suddenly you are treated like the bad guy just for standing on solid ground and stating a fact.
It is incredibly isolating to look at objective truth while a whole crowd high-fives each other over a delusion.
Has anyone else dealt with an interaction spiraling into this kind of alternate reality? How do you shake off the frustration when the crowd completely rewards a lie?