Controversy.

I have been, in accordance with my vow of the other week — and really, because I’m on deadline — actively avoiding any news stories that contain the words “Rob” and “Ford”.  My first instinct upon reading the duel of allegations that has become the Rob Ford/Sarah Thomson debacle was to run the hell away.

Because there is a horrible, nasty, smeary, turd-soup effect that happens when a woman alleges a sexual assault anytime and anywhere.  And there is a horrible, nasty, smeary turd bolognese with turd noodles al dente that goes down every time someone mentions those two special words, “Rob” and “Ford”, in mixed company.  And…oh man, this was not going to end well.  This was not going to end well at all.

I find myself deeply in sympathy with Matt Elliott in his MetroNews column this week: I hate this story.  I hate it to my bones.  Mostly because it isn’t story, it’s controversy.  And yes, there is a difference.

Stories, in the journalistic sense, are collections of facts.  They are reported, although this might be a matter of style at this point, because those facts being known is in the public interest.  Sometimes people think there’s an aspect of those facts you haven’t considered, and so they write editorial journalism or advocacy journalism, to give you an opinion to think about.  But the primary driving force is the same: Here is data you, O Person Living In Society, ought to know.

Whereas the most important function of a controversy is for everyone and their left shoe to have an opinion; its very attraction is the sheer absence of data.  Data would interfere with our chance to weigh in on whoever’s up for scrutiny this time, and that’s the primary product of controversies: reputational stakes.  Their output is not improved services, or a better day-to-day life, or new projects, or stronger communities.  Their output is a slightly shuffled definition on who’s Good and who’s Bad, and nothing else changes in the world.  At all.

So why the hell do they generate so much more ink than other kinds of news, when there is no tangible output from those discussions?  Because opinions are currency not just at City Hall or Queen’s Park; they’re currency on Twitter, and in social groups, and at the hypothetical water cooler I’ve never seen anyone at.  We have reputations too, after all, and there is no neater way to increase your IRL Klout than to have the smartest, coolest, most judgmental opinion on something everybody knows one sound bite about but nobody can lay down facts to disprove.

It’s the same beast: Controversies function not just to tell us if Rob Ford, Sarah Thomson, Yasir Naqvi, Tim Hudak are good or bad people.  We talk about them so damn much because it’s a chance to reshuffle our own social status.  They’re non-topics with null real-world values, so weighing in on them costs us nothing — and maybe someone will think we’re wise or pithy or an insider or cool.  Then we can strut around for a few days going I am the smartest!  Behold my increased social capital!  And I too have a blog!

But the thing is — and yes, there’s always a but.

In doing that — in making snappy remarks about who’s the winner or loser, hero or victim in a situation with two people we do not know or care about — we do some goddamned terrible things.  People are not Fight Night.  People are not living embodiments of ideologies.  They are people.  And when all the newspapers, and City Hall-watchers, and people involved in politics jump ship on everything to write a thousand editorials on who’s right and who’s wrong, on who we ought to hate or celebrate, well.  Humans get lost, in all their real, good-bad complexity.  Some vicious stereotypes get fed their lunch.  A whole lot of dignity gets flushed down the toilet.  Everything drowns in technicalities, rules-lawyering, the death of any nuance, and sides.

I hate controversies because they strip the humanity out of people.  They eat whatever they touch.

There has been an allegation of sexual assault.  That’s some serious shit.  The woman affected has the right to decide exactly how she wishes to handle that occurrence without character assassination; without having to field a thousand new enemies or even five hundred allies who are only allies because they hate the face of the other guy; without having her life dissected to see if we can like her or not, and all the attendant bullshit of being made a symbol of whatever everyone else pleases.  (And don’t think that sometimes people don’t report sexual assault because they do not want to deal with your opinion on their hair, face, pants, words, career, their whole damn life.)

An allegation of sexual assault is not an invitation to controversy.  Our opinions, as shocking as this may be, do not belong in every empty piece of airspace.

So let’s please not confuse story for controversy.  You can tell the difference easily, at a glance.  It’s about if making this point changes the way things work, or just changes who sits next to you in the cafeteria.  It’s about the public interest and not treating people like cartoon characters.

Because if what we’re doing is controversy, it doesn’t pay out, but it does cost.