"Marcellus Drilling News"

A major drawback of the Internet is that it encourages people to say things about you that they would never say to your face.  

Today my attention was drawn to a blog entitled “Marcellus Drilling News.”  The post about the Penn’s Peak hearing was entitled “FERC Alters PennEast Hearing Process to Reduce Antis’ Bleating,” and featured a picture of an open-mouthed goat.

The people opposed to the pipeline were referred to as “”anti-fossil fuel freaks” and were called “anti-drilling trolls.”

I don’t know the person who posts on this blog, but I’ll bet he or she is rather nice in person.  I’ll also bet that if he or she met Albertine Anthony, a farmer in her 80s who has put her farm in the Pennsylvania Farmland Preservation program and is worried about her well water and the scar that will cross her fields, he or she would be very reluctant to call her a troll.

On balance I think social media is a good thing.  After all, I post my blog entries almost every night, so I would be rather hypocritical to criticize.  Nonetheless, I think that many people forget that there are real people out there who are often hurt by what people say about them on the Web.

I’ll give you a personal example.  I don’t like it that a number of unions favor the PennEast pipeline.  Some of their members showed up last night to testify in favor.  I sat between two of them before I gave my testimony.  Face-to-face, they were nice guys who were hoping for employment.  We talked about Hillary Clinton, and how we all were fervently hoping she would beat Trump.  These were real guys who were looking for employment; I was a real guy who was trying to protect my farm.  None of us were “trolls.”