Hit Piece #2Yellow Stream Media In My Face
Disengruntledness
[su_dropcap style=”flat” size=”5″]T[/su_dropcap]he word “disgruntled” amuses me. It just sounds funny, right? Disgruntled. Not to mention the fun we can have in deconstructing it. What’s the opposite of disgruntled? Gruntled? Engruntled, maybe? Let’s compound the prefixes, shall we? Now we have disengruntled.
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Word it however you want. But if you, as a business owner, don’t take immediate responsibility for the customer’s disengruntledness, and express a desire in this public forum to alleviate her pain . . . then you’ve blown it! You’ve made a bad situation worse.
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As for the meaning of the word, the dictionaries don’t do it justice. The first definition of disgruntled that pops up on Google (no source cited) yields: “angry or dissatisfied”.
Dictionary.com (which pulls from the Random House, American Heritage, and Harper Collins dictionaries) says it means, “displeased and discontented; sulky; peevish”.
Cambridge Online says, “unhappy, annoyed, and disappointed about something”.
The word harks back to the 1600s, where the verb to gruntle (derived from grunt) meant “to utter little grunts”; the result of which is what we might today call grumbling. The prefix dis- (which typically reverses a word’s meaning; as in dislike, or disappear), in this case, serves to intensify the root’s meaning. In other words, disgruntled describes someone who complains a lot.
Which is still a weak way of defining a word that, these days, is almost always associated with a violent lunatic at a workplace. A disgruntled employee, for instance. Or a disgruntled customer.
Two Of a Kind
As for the former, the story most always follows this pattern: somebody at work did him dirty; he went home and loaded up his arsenal; he dressed up like Rambo; and he returned to work with guns and grenades a-blazing. It’s as if he were obliged to do so because he got the Disgruntled — some kind of fever that drove him berserk.
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Most hit pieces involve public figures, and are executed on a grand scale. But what about those done to the rest of us?
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As for disgruntled customers, fortunately, they are typically much less violent. Whereas they used to write their Congressmen or the Better Business Bureau or Letters to the Editor, they now spew misspelled, mangled reviews on Facebook and Yelp.
Online Customer Service
If you’re unaware of online review culture, you should know — before we go on — that most online stores (like eBay and Amazon) and business directories (like Yelp and Google My Business) include sections for customer reviews of products and services. These reviews often feature a 5-star rating system and a text box for comments. Then there’s usually another text box underneath where the business being reviewed can REPLY to the review.
Take it from someone who’s worked in the service industry for many years (me). That REPLY box is a one-time opportunity for the customer service rep to say the right thing. And the right thing is always some variation of: “We at [business name] are truly sorry that you had a bad experience with us. We hope you will give us another try, so this time we can exceed your expectations, at no extra cost to you.”
Word it however you want. But if you, as a business owner, don’t take immediate responsibility for the customer’s disengruntledness, and express a desire in this public forum to alleviate her pain . . . then you’ve blown it! You’ve made a bad situation worse.
The Working Class Swamp Of Ill Will
The hit jobs that I described in Part One of this hit piece about hit pieces involve public figures, and are executed on a grand scale. But what about those done to the rest of us?
New Era, New Term
The Internet is now the world’s watercooler. Social Media is the best way to spread not-so-passive-aggressive gossip (including indiscreet photos) about co-workers and ex-lovers. Online reviews, as I mentioned, are the best way to get back at businesses who done ya dirty; not to mention, there is little incentive NOT to exaggerate the perceived injustices.
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It’s one thing for rich people to zing rich people on TV. That’s entertainment. It’s another thing for the rest of us to turn on each other because we’re so bored and poverty stricken that stepping on each other has become a hobby.
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Discussion groups routinely attract amateur pundits who think themselves clever in comparing authority figures to Hitler, 65 years after the political philosopher Leo Strauss made fun of the practice by calling it Reductio ad Hitlerum. Trolls threaten rape and murder with the kind of salacious detail that we used to only hear in serial killer stories.
I do now, herein, christen this morass of mundane digital invective Yellow Stream Media! Yellow Journalism sought to ignite wars where there were no conflicts; to topple beloved kings; and to elevate unqualified plebeians. Yellow Stream Media, on the other hand, seeks to piss on people who are already struggling — powerless people taking out their frustrations on other powerless people.
American Sadism
So . . . what got me started on this series of articles about the nasty things we say about each other online? I’m no stranger to the digital world of workplace gossips, illiterate reviewers, intellectual gas bags, and psychotic trolls. I’ve learned the value of taking the high road; and then, if all else fails, blocking repeat offenders from my social media accounts and reporting the dangerous ones to the platform operators.
The specific reason I decided to delve into this topic at length (ad nauseam, perhaps) is because a hit job was done on me, recently. And not by a bored troll or a self-righteous Bernie-bot, or any of the other usual suspects. No, this attack — which yet hasn’t amounted to any harm to me; both because of its obscurity and its irrelevance to my life at this time — obviously brewed in the mind of a powerless person for almost as long as it has taken me to write about it.
And I write about it because America has fallen to this nadir in the Information Age — anybody can say anything about anybody to almost everybody, and nobody seems to give a shit about the veracity of those statements. We, as a nation, have a moral outrage addiction. And many of us are all too willing to believe anything that fuels our daily dose of imagined superiority.
That’s Entertainment
The worst offenders on Politifact.com — which, by scrolling down the Pants-On-Fire listing, seem to be Donald Trump and a bunch of viral memes, emails, and Facebook posts — get away with their truth assassinations precisely because so many voters value their feelings more than facts. In other words, their minds (and their decisions) are controlled by their emotions.
But it’s one thing for rich people to zing rich people on TV. That’s entertainment. It’s another thing for the rest of us to turn on each other because we’re so bored and poverty stricken that stepping on each other has become a hobby.
In-To-Context
Before I get around to telling you about the hit job that was done on me (which I will do in Part Four), I gotta lay down the context of that story (in Part Three). Because Truth is always revealed in a context by which we can measure its value.
Hey SRP:
This was easily my favorite of the four blogs of yours that I’ve read so far,and I enjoyed the others immensely!!!
Is this because I agree with your thoughts 150%? Perhaps I myself am feeling morally superior as well, but, my god,its great to be aware of some counter force (voice crying in the wilderness though it may be! !) to the continuing uncivil stupidity that passes for modern objectivity. ….
Keep keeping on!!
TMA
Thank you Tom. Always a pleasure to talk with you about the issues.
Hey SRP:
This was easily my favorite of the four blogs of yours that I’ve read so far,and I enjoyed the others immensely!!!
Is this because I agree with your thoughts 150%? Perhaps I myself am feeling morally superior as well, but, my god,its great to be aware of some counter force (voice crying in the wilderness though it may be! !) to the continuing uncivil stupidity that passes for modern objectivity. ….
Keep keeping on!!
TMA
Thank you Tom. Always a pleasure to talk with you about the issues.