The Whine of Trolls

The Whine. I first learned of it listening to late night radio call-in shows on my way to work at the Tampa International Airport. Then I forgot it, until I heard it again when I worked in the reference department of the Leon County Library. There are, or were, people who call up library reference desks to run the staff through their paces by asking them weird and difficult questions they think up for no other purpose (I do not regard in this category the drunks who once called in from a bar to ask what Triple Sec was: that had a valid purpose). Such people were emotionally stunted and it gave them a sick feeling of value to have us at their call. They all seemed to have a peculiar whine lurking in the margins of their voices. It was precisely the same whine I had heard on all those late night call-ins, those with crack pot ideas who were on a first name basis with the hosts.

Now, decades later, when I read the ad hominem attacks masquerading as opinions, if I lean close to the screen I can hear the same pathetic whine.