Runester

Hey, you know that saying, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch?” Well, apparently it’s like some kind of cosmic law or something. Because, guess what? I was offered a free lunch today! And, there certainly was a ‘payment’ of sorts … but totally not the one that I thought.

First, the host was a financial planner that wanted to introduce himself and his services to a group of employees here. I thought I’d be setting through an hour lecture on finances and investments. Instead, he just handed out his business card and told us to enjoy our lunch. So – no lecture or high pressure sales pitch. Furthermore, the restaurant was very nice! Venezuelan cuisine; I had a plate of pulled pork with rice, black beans, grilled plantains, and two fried eggs over top. Delicious! So – no louse restaurant or cheap meal. It looks like this really would be a free lunch, after all.

Not so fast! It turns out that one of my co-workers (whom I’ve never met) likes to engage in pointless political debate with the chief aim of riling other people up. And, he was setting right across from another co-worker (whom I do know) who is easily riled up. So, he pushed her buttons and she started debating politics and he countered with ever more ridiculous rebuttals and the entire “conversation” escalated. It lasted the entire length of the lunch and possible longer! [I heard they continued their discussion once back to work.] It was EXACTLY like watching two professionals reenacting dialog taken straight from a Fark.com discussion thread. The topics ranged over euthanasia, taxes, liberal / conservative / libertarian, current wars, past wars, the current president, the last president, gay marriage, and on and on and on. The instigator even Godwinned the discussion by bringing up Hitler and claiming that Obama’s health care plan was socialist … like Hitler was a socialist. I piped up at that point to note that the conversation had been Godwinned, but no one backed down. When they finally got around to anti-anal sex laws, I put my foot down and declared that anal sex was OFF LIMITS, especially for a work lunch.

Now, I may have been born at night, but I wasn’t born last night. And in all my years as a professional – I’ve never heard a running debate like this, at work, over food, in my life. It was exactly like the Internet had shown up and the usual crap we see everywhere from USENET to mailing lists to web forums was spilling out at our lunch table, in real time, with an audience. But, I did learn a valuable lesson. It’s not the nature of text-only communication, without the subtleties of facial expressions and body language, that leads or even fosters this type of ‘discussion’ – because here we were with live humans in a live, real-time verbal sparring match, not setting more then three (3) feet from one another. No, apparently the only thing needed is one person to ‘troll’ and another to react, and this appears to be wired into us, regardless of the medium.