Saturday, June 18, 2016

The Orlando effect aka the reverse butterfly effect

It is said that the flutter of a butterfly's wings in Brazil can cause a tornado in Tokyo. It seems that I am experiencing the reverse of it at my work place.
The metaphorical tornado is of course the "Orlando" shooting. And the butterfly's wings that are flapping is one of my colleagues.
My colleague was acting more angsty and irritable than usual. Even the slightest of misunderstandings could trigger an over reaction of gigantic proportions.
For the life of us we could not understand why?
When someone said it is because of Orlando we thought it was someones idea of a bad joke. But having listened to his point of view and giving it some thought I realized that their could be some truth in it.
As you know the Orlando incident resulted in a lot of anti gay rhetoric in the online world. Our colleague - who was a champion of Gay and LGBT rights - was aggressively responding to some these negative statements. He never realized that he was getting too involved. And all the negativity he was experiencing in the virtual world was leading to toxic relationships in the real world.
Who would have thought that this tragedy would have such far reaching effects.
One thing is for sure, I never did.

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