Some days are diamonds and some days are stones … and I suppose the same can be said for weekends.

Well, the past weekend was not the best of times. It rather resembled an age of foolishness, disbelief, incredulity and a season of darkness, to quote Charles Dickens very selectively.

What triggered the debacle was a seemingly inconspicuous article posted on the Facebook page of the Zoutpansberger. It was a photo of a tent that had been erected across Rietbok Street in Louis Trichardt, blocking all traffic. It could have been put up for a 21^st birthday bash or it could have been for a wedding, for all we knew. The Makhado Municipality was contacted and a spokesperson said that no permission had been granted for this – they would investigate.

The photo was posted on Friday afternoon, both as a warning to residents not to use that part of the road and to reflect on an issue newsworthy to people living in that neighbourhood.

The backlash over the next few days was incredible. Very quickly it was pointed out that the tent had been put up to cater for a funeral. Accusations of racism followed and the newspaper was accused of intolerance, belittling people and being incompetent.

An “us-and-them” scenario quickly developed, with readers hurling insults at one another. In between, the “voices of sanity” tried to put matters into perspective, but the social media’s pack of hounds were working towards a frenzy and refused to listen to any reason.

The post attracted more than 15 000 visits and dozens of comments were made, ranging from readers threatening with land grabs “because it is our land” to readers encouraging others to drive straight through the tent.

Every now and then, someone took a stab at the newspaper. “We are watching you,” one user threatened. A family member of the deceased commented that the necessary permits had been obtained and said that the confusion had been clarified when the traffic officials arrived at the scene. We subsequently added a paragraph to the story, incorporating the family member’s comment. We promised to follow up on the matter as soon as a municipal spokesperson was available the next week.

The whole episode became very difficult to handle. We have always valued freedom of speech and that freedom includes the right of readers to criticize the newspaper. The criticism does not even need to be fair; we will still allow it. What developed, however, was nothing less than an all-out brawl, with no respect for one another. The attacks on the newspaper were especially vicious.

My idea of a relaxed weekend at home is not to monitor Facebook constantly to remove disgusting comments and to ban users. Never before did we need to ban users. Mostly we have been impressed and glad that the people seemed to be interested in the news that we offer. What was wrong?

While reading through the comments, replies and more replies, the lyrics of a Gloria Gaynor song started going through my head: "At first I was afraid, I was petrified …"

Then something that I had heard a few months ago started making more sense. I attended the World Editor’s Forum in Durban and one of the speakers was Maria A. Ressa, the very dynamic owner/editor of the Philippines-based news site, Rappler. She and her colleagues became the target of the dark side of the social media world. They had to endure months of abuse and attacks on social media. “I would never have believed that the people living in the Philippines, who are gentle and peace-loving, could resort to such hatred,” she said.

But Maria is no ordinary woman. Instead of succumbing to the constant threats, she set about finding out who the ones were who hated her so much. What Maria uncovered, is a lesson to all of us, especially those under the illusion that lynch mobs are limited to rural villages. She and her team spent three months analysing the social media traffic and tracing the origins of the Internet trolls. It turned out that 26 fake accounts can reach up to 3 million other accounts. What she described is a nightmare even scarier than a Bell Pottinger campaign.

Maria came up with the ninety-nine-one theory. For every 100 Facebook users, there are 90 who are moderate, almost apathetic, users. On the odd occasion, they would click on the “like” button and every now and then they would post something relating to family or friends. Then there are the other nine, who have an opinion about everything, regularly posting stuff and they seemingly have a lot of time on their hands to search for stuff to share.

And then there is the one.

The one is the disruptive element, focusing his or her energy on influencing the other nine active posters. If this person has a vindictive and evil agenda, the results can be scary. Very often these are also fake accounts, set up to create some sort of anonymity for the user.

But back to the weekend’s horror story on the Zoutpansberger’s Facebook page:

A quick check on the profiles of the people posting the aggressive and blatantly racist comments showed that they appear not to live in the area. One name that stood out was that of a former editor/publisher whose newspaper was a dismal failure in the province. Some of the profiles looked sketchy, to say the least. Could there be a common denominator? Could this be a deliberate attack aimed at discrediting the newspaper?

I am very wary of conspiracy theories, because they can lead you down a wrong track, clouding your judgement. But, on the other hand, we are living in strange times where some wars have moved into the digital realm. The “Liby Sebola” may very well be a man sitting in the Western Cape, finding some sort of perverse satisfaction in spurring racial hatred in the Vhembe area.

Unfortunately, a lot of regular readers were drawn into the brawl. They reacted to the bait of the thin-skinned Facebook users; the ones who really go out of their way to be offended, just to have an excuse to snap at the “offenders”.

Maria Ressa made another interesting point during the World Editor’s Forum when she said: “Journalists are no longer the gate-keepers. Facebook, Twitter and Google are.” What she meant is that, previously, newspaper editors could play a gatekeeping role, editing and shortening letters before these were published. Often the letter writers were contacted and informed that what they said might be perceived as libellous and might offend. Nowadays, it has become a free-for-all, because Facebook and Twitter will not interfere.

Unfortunately, this is now being used as ammunition by people with their own sinister agendas to attack publishers. The sad part is also that there is still a lot of prejudice in the community, with ugly racism rearing its head every now and then.

I firmly believe that our community is inherently good, with only isolated cases of evil. I am not going to allow the Facebook trolls with their own agenda to succeed in promoting hatred, at least not on our platforms.

Gloria Gaynor’s song, I will Survive, is also about fairness and the fight against bullies. Publishers should not be bullied the way some of these trolls tried to bully us. For them we will repeat the lyrics of the song where it says:

"Go on now, go, walk out the door. Just turn around now, 'cause you're not welcome anymore … Did you think I'd crumble? Did you think I'd lay down and die?"

No, we won’t. But we can also do with some assistance from our readers.

(Editor - Anton van Zyl)