I am on a Facebook strike. I plan on holding out for a long fucking time. But I still haven’t given up my HuffPo. I check that fucker more than I used to check Facebook, so maybe I have gained nothing, no time at all, by signing off on Facebook. I can no longer comment on HuffPo because it requires a Facebook account to post. What a colossally stupid fucking thing to do, in my opinion. They must have lost a lot of good commenters by circumscribing access the way they did. In spite of all of this, it is still a monumentally important online paper. I know of no analogue to the HuffPo. No one has the mix of news, opinion and damn near about anything to suit your tastes if you just poke around.
Anyway, I read the comments. Nowadays, everyone is a fucking expert at everything, and that includes me. I have been on the Internet long enough to know where to find credible information. The comments are full of self educated folk, who use a peculiar lingo (never have I seen nor heard the words “spew vitriol” in so much use as on the Internet) that is a hallmark of participating in something online. Some people’s grasp on current affairs is indeed impressive, and I often come away a bit more informed. Then there’s the trolls. Ah, the trolls. All it takes is one obnoxious buffoon to set off hundreds of peoples’ bullshit meters. At HuffPo, they have never heard the dictum “don’t feed the trolls”. It’s good policy to ignore a drive-by poster, and that’s what most of them turn out to be. Just one line and they take off…leaving indignation and disgust in their wake.
Today, one thing caught my attention. Someone said that Judaism doesn’t believe in an afterlife. I had to do a double take on that. Does it? Yes. Who gets something wrong like that? Conservative trolls, that’s who. The offender was immediately schooled and dismissed. I learned something from my little troll friend, though. It was worth looking into, and I thought I’d share. While it is indeed true that Judaism focuses in large part on this life, there is no shortage of afterlife citations in Torah. The gist is, Judaism is no less eschatological than Christianity or Islam. They are all messianic religions who believe in final judgement and resurrection.
Now you know, if you hadn’t considered it.