Should You Respond to Anti-Torah Posts Online?

Hi, this is David Wolowski with our question and answer series. If I see an anti-Torah post online or on social media, is it better to ignore the post or to engage? Yesh or yesh. There's there's different opinions on this matter. And uh there are some people who feel that you need what they call in Hebrew hasbara. You need to respond to all these things, etc. Other people employ the Latin expression helfnicht, which basically means it's not going to make any difference. All you're going to do is inspire people to double down and say more nasty yucky things. Which one is right? I don't know which one is right. Personally, when I was younger, I always used to respond. As I got older, I realized that most people don't care what you think. The odds of you being able to influence somebody who's commentator online, uh open parentheses. There are these frum news sites. And sometimes in the comments, people write the most vile, vicious, terrible things. And they don't do what I do. Uh I I look around and if I can uh if I see a post that I believe is insulting or degrading to somebody, you know, I don't care if you correct me or criticize me or something like that. But just write something that's yucky, I take it right down. But these other news sites don't. They leave up these horrible things with lashon hara and with terrible things, yeah. And people say, "You're a Torah site. Why do you leave them up?" And they said, "Cuz that's the only reason people read." They go to these sites not to see the news stories, but to see the comments. I think that's uh a terrible, terrible situation. But um uh uh it just means that uh the term for this are trolls, people who just you know I have a few trolls I see who comment. I recognize a few of the names. Sometimes they come back with a different name, but I still recognize the style, you know. And they just write yucky things and and I'm like, why? Why? For what? What could you possibly gain from this as a person? But they do. So I I make an effort to take it down. And so therefore, if you think you're going to engage with people who are trolls good luck. Maybe maybe you can get through to them. You know. I was in the middle of a particular controversy once and this one person uh is writing me these is attacking me and I reached out to him and he wrote me back I don't know how these people do it like three pages and I wrote him back on every point. And another five pages. I didn't write him back. My wife says, why are you wasting your time? And I said, I want to go down the rabbit hole and see where it leads. I want to see, you know, where it will end up in the magic world of Alice in Wonderland. I'll follow the rabbit down the hole, you know. Anyway, eventually the person conceded to me. They said, you were right. You're right on every point you made. And then he writes another column attacking me completely on everything that I said. >> [laughter] >> Even after I showed him that what he was saying made no sense. So what did I do? I wasted my time. What did I gain from it? I gained that hopefully I'll save you the time of having to engage with these people because they're not interested in the truth. They're interested in clicks. They're interested in whatever it is, you know. And it's depressing. It's depressing, you know. When Tucker Carlson can say that algebra was invented by Jews to control the at that point you just realize you're you're not dealing with normal people here. These people crazy. Well, what Well, why would I engage with them? So, that's my opinion. Other people disagree. Both are valid approaches, but since he asked me my opinion, I'm very happy to share it. >> [laughter] >> This is David Icke with a question and answer series.