Bixxy Noodles  💉

Whether you are new to this twitter account or a long-time follower, you are probably aware that I have recently found myself at the heart of a controversy over a viral hashtag: #PitbullDropOff

A few weeks ago, I tweeted that I had joined the ranks of those who were picking up unwanted pitbull terriers being advertised as free giveaways and delivering them to animal shelters which performed euthanasia. I did not come up this idea.

This was discovered several days later by some outraged pitbull lovers, who posted angrily about it on Facebook and Twitter, creating quite a bit of buzz in a short period of time.

I was immediately inundated with twitter attacks, from outraged disapproval to direct death threats and worse, by hundreds if not thousands of upset pitbull enthusiasts.

The hashtag was also picked up and amplified by others who are concerned by the disproportionate record of violent attacks connected to pitbull terriers. It snowballed. Soon there were media stories.

I’m going to talk a little bit about this phenomenon and what I saw happening here. But first, I want to clear something up: this was NOT a “troll.” #PitbullDropOff is real. I wasn't the first and I won't be the last.

More than a week after it started, somebody posted something to 4chan claiming it had all been done as troll operation. This has since been latched onto by pitbull owners as “proof” that #PitbullDropOff is fake. It isn’t.

Either the 4chan post was trolls jumping on a viral bandwagon or it was some kind of disinformation attempt. It doesn’t really matter. But now Snopes has picked it up too (being wrong, as usual for Snopes).

At this point, it doesn’t actually matter whether #PitbullDropOff is real or a troll anymore. It’s out there, and in fact people ARE doing it for real now, whether they were in the beginning or not.

What matters more now is how people are REACTING to #PitbullDropOff – because it illustrates a few things which are profoundly broken in American culture and communication.

Weeks later, I am still getting dozens of death threats per day. Some of these are floridly violent and dripping with emotional intensity. Others are simply outbursts. The rage is palpable and incoherent.

The level of emotional reaction is completely out of proportion to the content of what I originally said: that I was picking up pitbulls that people were giving away for free and taking them to an animal shelter.

On its face, this is very simple and innocuous. The dogs are unwanted. Their owners are discarding them. I don’t buy or steal them. They are freely, usually happily given away. Nothing illegal or shady.

I then take them to the local animal control shelter and drop them off. This is what good citizens are SUPPOSED to do with unwanted animals: let official, knowledgeable agents evaluate them and decide what to do with them.

I don’t harm the dogs. I feed and water them while they are in my possession and I don’t do anything to hurt them. Why would I? I don’t hate them, and animal cruelty is as pointless as it is distasteful.

I just take them to the official, legal institution where unwanted animals should be taken, in order to let expert specialists decide what to do with them. I’m just a taxi service for unwanted dogs. #PitbullDropOff

The rage and venom that is generated among some people when I say these things is way out of proportion to what is actually being said. When you see that kind of overreaction, it is always an indicator of COGNITIVE DISSONANCE.

What is cognitive dissonance? It’s a subject I’m going to explore in some depth here, because it has become characteristic of most modern American thinking and conversation on difficult subjects.

Cognitive dissonance is a psychological state of mental and emotional discomfort experienced by someone who simultaneously holds two ore more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance …

In 1957, psychologist Leon Festinger observed that human beings strive for internal psychological consistency in order to function in the real world. We seek to understand and make orderly sense of things we see and know.

When we experience internal inconsistency in our beliefs, ideas, or values, we become uncomfortable in response to the dissonance. Then we seek to resolve the conflict and reduce the dissonance (and restore psychological comfort).

The magnitude of the discomfort is in direct proportion to the magnitude of the conflict and associated cognitive dissonance. It is also directly proportionate to the perceived importance of the beliefs in question.

If somebody is experiencing conflict between two beliefs which they hold especially dear, it can generate VERY large emotional reactions out of all proportion to small triggers.

Those beliefs which people most closely associate with their own personal sense of identity and self-worth generate the largest emotional responses of all when they become dissonant with reality or other ideas.

Anything conflicting with those core values and beliefs can elicit powerful and violent responses if the dissonance is sharp or wide enough. The psychological stress and discomfort can be extreme.

People respond to cognitive dissonance in different ways, depending on their level of psychological maturity and how closely associated with personal identity the beliefs in conflict are.

At the most healthy level, someone experiencing out-of-proportion discomfort as a result of cognitive dissonance will pause, examine their reactions and beliefs, and seek to correct their errors in order to regain consonance.

Less healthy, but more common, is an attempt at rationalization or justification in order to try and resolve the conflict by ignoring conflicting content or reframing it in non-conflicting terms.

Rationalization and justification are strongly connected to defensiveness, which is a common reaction where cognitive dissonance is present. Defensiveness also includes hyper-sensitivity to and pre-emption of conflicting ideas.

At a more extremely unhealthy level, someone experiencing cognitive dissonance will experience an emotional breakdown and lash out to destroy the trigger of the reaction in order to make the discomfort stop.