I was riding the Q train over the Manhattan Bridge when a guy stepped into the car to play some music. He had a clarinet and began to play “Take Five,” I believe. A clarinet playing busker was a first for me in my almost nineteen years in New York City, so I posted a Facebook status about it. “Man, you think you hate mariachi bands until a white guy with a clarinet steps on the train.” A friend of mine who plays saxophone tagged a few friends of his who play jazz clarinet. One of them – the only one who paid attention to a complete stranger’s status perhaps because he had no gig to go to – got really bent out of shape and started calling me out for my repugnant “racial humor.”

So, I deleted all of the troll’s comments. He noticed and then he kept at it for the rest of the day. At one point saying, “I bet this comment will be deleted too #ignorance.”

Ignorance.

It’s rare that I get to say this but as a white male who was being taken to task by another white male for identifying a third white male as white, my conscience was clean. Also, the joke wasn’t that the guy was white, it was that he was a grown man playing the clarinet, apparently having forgotten to give it up in the fifth grade like the rest of us. I think the joke was apparent to the rest of us who had decided not to devote our lives playing music enjoyed primarily by WWI veterans. But in his mind, he had to call me out for ignorance.

There’s something about that word. I feel like it pops up in online discussions and in a very specific way. I have no data for this, it’s anecdotal but I stand by it. Here are a few examples.

Just recently, I saw a friend’s Instagram post in which she screengrabbed the dating profile of a guy talking about things that he was “allergic to.” One of them was “ignorance.” Some of the others were “liberals” and “feminazis.”

In the fall of 2016, a friend from high school (in the true social media sense of the phrase, in that we haven’t spoken since high school but are friends on Facebook) posted after the outrage of the election, “People have been saying a lot of ignorant things about Donald Trump, so, I need to take a break from social media.”

Three years ago, when I wrote this article about inheriting money from my parents, I received an email from a random reader stating, among other things, “Your confusion over property taxes and the estate tax is ignorant.” It wasn’t. I was actually quite clear. But there was that word again, “ignorant.”

This stands out to me because I’m intrigued by the word choice. What are these people saying? I disagree with you. I think you’re incorrect. You are mistaken. If you’re “wrong,” “mistaken,” or “incorrect” about something, it’s merely a deviation from your normal ability to put forth a reasoned argument. Ignorance, on the other hand, connotes a state of being. It’s not that I disagree with you. No, you are ignorant and therefore can be dismissed because, sadly, you are at an intellectual disadvantage.

That’s the other thing. When you call someone ignorant, the implication is that you are able to make that judgement. In other words, it’s a sly way of saying – without actually saying – “I’m smarter than you.”

It’s a status grab and a bit of an unearned mic drop. The people who use the word ignorant online are in the same league as those who, halfway through an argument (that they are most likely losing), will decide to provide a definition of terms. “Well, the definition of treason is actually…” This is very much in the spirit of mansplaining, the essence of which is, “Let me break down my argument into the simplest terms because you haven’t yet understood that I’m right.” (I once happened upon an argument where a man provided the definition of mansplaining to a woman. It was like watching the white male space time continuum fold in on itself.)

This could very well be my own pet theory but I don’t think it is. I want you to do me a favor and be on the lookout for “ignorant” in your social media.

Just to be clear, I’m not saying that ignorance doesn’t exist online. It most certainly does. We see evidence of that daily. I’m not talking about its existence, I’m talking about those who level the charge.

So, I suppose my theory is this: excepting cases of actual demonstrable ignorance, if you’re calling people ignorant online, you’re kind of an asshole.

Please note that I’m saying “asshole” because that’s what I mean. It’s not polite or erudite and has no business in any sort of constructive debate. But it’s what I mean. I’m not going to make like an atheist or libertarian and couch it in syllables to inflate its importance and say, “Because I am capable of reason and logic, I reject your pretentious diction.”

No, you’re just being kind of an asshole. Cut it out.