The day I encountered a Colossalot
It could happen to anyone.
Yes, that means that you too could come into contact with one at some point in your life. In fact, you may have already had the misfortune of coming into contact with one, without realising it had a name. You may even know one, or may have come across a breed of the species so well camouflaged into the decent half of the human race that they may not be detectable as a member of the species at all. But, diagnosed or not, a Colossalot will always show their true colours in a close environment; rarely will you need to meet one more than once to identify them as what they truly are. But what actually are they?
What a Colossalot actually is:
As the term has not yet been coined by the bibliographers of the Oxford Dictionary (much to my sadness), I can’t provide a dictionary definition, but I can give you a rough idea of what you should look out for. A typical Colossalot should not be confused with your standard Bigot. A bigot may drop a careless racist slur or five into a conversation, or make a comment about women that’s just so archaic it may have been adopted from the mouth of a middle-class male from the 18th century, or shudder at the sight of two men merely holding hands in a public place. Most noticeable in the behaviour of a bigot in particular is their willingness to defend their narrow-minded views - almost as if protecting them from nuclear attack.
The Colossalot is, in essence, not dissimilar to this. In fact, the best way to describe one is to imagine a bigot, but ten times worse. Mostly, it’s in their attention to detail - the extent they will go to to be the most offensive version of themselves that they can be. He or she tends to go unnoticed for a short time, like a lion hunting its prey in the long grass. It prowls, undetected, around its territory, eyes firmly fixed on its target, patiently waiting for the correct time to pounce.
And then suddenly, as if out of nowhere, it’ll bound right towards you with an “I hate gay people!”, or “There are lots of jobs that women can’t do. Fact!”, or potentially even “Mental illness is a myth!” in such an assured tone that for a split second, you may even question your own beliefs.
For a split second, that is, until you come to the realisation that you have just come face-to-face with one from a species so unnecessary, so undesirable, and so utterly pointless that it may result in an initially furious outburst, before descending into a lengthy-rage, and soon dying down into a (not so) friendly rant about how unnecessary, undesirable and utterly pointless they are. Or at least, in my experience, that was basically what happened.
The time that I met the worst person I’ve ever met in my entire existence on Earth:
It was a warm(ish) Sunday afternoon, mid-shift at the pub I work at every weekend. We’d been relatively low on staff for a while, and a few weeks prior to said shift, my boss had just hired a new member of kitchen staff (he-who-shall-not-be-named).
At first, he seemed like any other average 23 year old - if slightly more irritating, with a tendency to sing loudly and deliberately out of tune to every single song that came on the radio.
Every single one.
But aside from that, he seemed pretty talkative and did a half decent job. You could’ve almost described him as…pleasant. But as shifts went by, 23 year old male established an unmistakable aura. In the past, I’d brushed aside comments he’d made about previous jobs he’d had, where he’d “left the waitresses to polish cutlery” purely because “it was their job”, or the fact that he took a fondness to “drinking beer and chasing tits”. But the more he went on (and on) (and on and on) it soon became clear that this was much more than just an aura. After much deliberation, I soon came to the conclusion that I was working with - what I’d previously thought to be – a typical, plain and simple, state of the art idiot. But it was on this particular Sunday afternoon that I realised he was so much more than that; there was seemingly a complexity to his idiocrasy that was unbeknown to me up until that point. He was, unmistakeably, a Colossalot.
The conversation went as follows. I happened to mention that I’d just served the two gentlemen sitting at Table 1 – two gentlemen that just so happened to be an openly homosexual couple. In response to this, he queried,
“What, are they like…gay?” squirming as if verbalising the adjective itself brought him physical pain. To this, I calmly retorted,
“Yes”.
I distinctly remember my eye twitching slightly; why some still feel the need to question sexuality based on assumption is beyond me.
He then proceeded to make a noise that I can only describe as sounding as if it had come from a snout, rolled his eyes unattractively into the back of his head as if partaking in some sort of seizure, and proclaimed,
“Eurgh. Don’t like gay people”.
I seem to remember a pause that lasted a good five to six seconds, finding myself genuinely believing he’d just tried and failed at some sort of humour, and managed to respond hopefully with,
“Are you joking?”
To cut a long story short, you can probably guess what his answer was. Colossalot had just made his first leap through the long grass. And so, of course, I had to make my first attack. My initial reaction was to persistently ask questions in the hope that he’d eventually realise the extent of his stupidity. Oh, if only it were that simple. I then, quite predictably, received a plethora of mind-numbingly clueless responses such as: “It’s just wrong”, “Men can’t have babies” and my personal favourite, “I’m not a Christian but God made men and women to be together” (no, honestly). So this question-and-answer style of debate lasted for a solid 5 minutes before I began using language that wouldn’t be appropriate for this article. (What can I say? I tried…)
If this was your average bigot, the debate may have relatively drawn to a close - if to a slightly unsatisfying one. But no, a Colossalot wouldn’t stop there. A Colossalot would just not be a Colossalot without going out of their way to offend to the best of their ability – it’s just what they do! So, he went on in his own happy and content way to discuss his next topic of conversation - women’s pay. Much to my horror. He used the example of Serena Williams…you might have heard of her, she’s that American tennis player who happens to be a woman and also happens to have won 22 Grand Slams, has altogether won 38 major titles in her career, and has been ranked No. 1 in singles six times. But whatever.
He persisted with something along the lines of,
“I definitely agree with the fact that women should be paid less in tennis - I just think people prefer watching men play. If you had to pick between Andy Murray and Serena Williams, you’d go for Murray, wouldn’t you?”
Colossalot makes his second strike, eager to hit hard with his use of offending-females-in-front-of an-actual-real-life-female. He has a deliberately provoking look in his eye, as if being intentionally antagonising. Which is another trait to look out for in Colossalots – deliberate antagonising. They take pleasure in disagreeing, to the extent that the opposing individual in the debate is forced into a furious rage to which a Colossalot may even laugh at, much to the opposition’s disgust.
I won’t bore you with the next four hours of my shift that day; it was as tedious and cyclical and dumbfounding as you would imagine it to be. The rest of the “debate” took a voyage into a whole range of controversial topics (well, controversial if you have the mind-set of someone like Farage or Trump), yet as much as I tried to persuade my new-found Colossalot friend that he was so profoundly wrong in his views, there’s just not a lot you can do with this breed of person. However, a good cold-shoulder and an occasional glare is both immensely satisfying and usually relatively successful.
The whole point of this story:
I’m sure I’m not the only person in the world to have come across someone like this in my lifetime. In fact, I’m certain I’m not. So in all seriousness, if you ever have the misfortune of coming into contact with someone like this, always challenge them – even if you feel like you’re getting nowhere (and most of the time, it probably will feel like that). As a generation, we can’t let ourselves be dictated by the bigots of the world: the Nigel Farages and the Donald Trumps, the intoxicated 60 year olds that sit behind the bar, the politicians that simply just don’t care. It seems like a small gesture to make someone aware that they can’t dislike someone based solely on their sexuality, or treat someone differently due to their gender, or deliberately call someone a “she” when they want to be known as a “he”, but that one small gesture will be a part of an altogether greater movement against prejudice and bigotry in our society. If we don’t challenge, then how can we expect change?
I’m aware that we will never be able to obliterate every single person with a bigoted mind-set – and after all, just because they hold views that may not correspond with what you personally believe in, it’s not to say that they are necessarily a bad person themselves. Well, not always. But attempting to make someone aware of their overt prejudice against a particular group of people, whether they are aware that they are doing it or not, is so important. And that’s what makes it more important – said individual may not even be aware of their prejudice themselves. A lot of the time, views are passed down through generations of bigotry - back to a time where women were seen as much lesser than men and to be gay was a crime - which really wasn’t that long ago at all. In fact, homosexuality was only legalised in 1967, and even then you still had to be over 21, AND homosexual acts had to be in private.
So really, it’s frustrating, but it’s also no wonder that traces of bigotry still remain in this day and age. This is why, as a new generation, it is so vital that we act now and stand up to the “Colossalots” and the bigots of this day and age; we weren’t born into a society of monumental injustice, nor should we let ourselves slip back into one.
Lucy Powderly
Yes, that means that you too could come into contact with one at some point in your life. In fact, you may have already had the misfortune of coming into contact with one, without realising it had a name. You may even know one, or may have come across a breed of the species so well camouflaged into the decent half of the human race that they may not be detectable as a member of the species at all. But, diagnosed or not, a Colossalot will always show their true colours in a close environment; rarely will you need to meet one more than once to identify them as what they truly are. But what actually are they?
What a Colossalot actually is:
As the term has not yet been coined by the bibliographers of the Oxford Dictionary (much to my sadness), I can’t provide a dictionary definition, but I can give you a rough idea of what you should look out for. A typical Colossalot should not be confused with your standard Bigot. A bigot may drop a careless racist slur or five into a conversation, or make a comment about women that’s just so archaic it may have been adopted from the mouth of a middle-class male from the 18th century, or shudder at the sight of two men merely holding hands in a public place. Most noticeable in the behaviour of a bigot in particular is their willingness to defend their narrow-minded views - almost as if protecting them from nuclear attack.
The Colossalot is, in essence, not dissimilar to this. In fact, the best way to describe one is to imagine a bigot, but ten times worse. Mostly, it’s in their attention to detail - the extent they will go to to be the most offensive version of themselves that they can be. He or she tends to go unnoticed for a short time, like a lion hunting its prey in the long grass. It prowls, undetected, around its territory, eyes firmly fixed on its target, patiently waiting for the correct time to pounce.
And then suddenly, as if out of nowhere, it’ll bound right towards you with an “I hate gay people!”, or “There are lots of jobs that women can’t do. Fact!”, or potentially even “Mental illness is a myth!” in such an assured tone that for a split second, you may even question your own beliefs.
For a split second, that is, until you come to the realisation that you have just come face-to-face with one from a species so unnecessary, so undesirable, and so utterly pointless that it may result in an initially furious outburst, before descending into a lengthy-rage, and soon dying down into a (not so) friendly rant about how unnecessary, undesirable and utterly pointless they are. Or at least, in my experience, that was basically what happened.
The time that I met the worst person I’ve ever met in my entire existence on Earth:
It was a warm(ish) Sunday afternoon, mid-shift at the pub I work at every weekend. We’d been relatively low on staff for a while, and a few weeks prior to said shift, my boss had just hired a new member of kitchen staff (he-who-shall-not-be-named).
At first, he seemed like any other average 23 year old - if slightly more irritating, with a tendency to sing loudly and deliberately out of tune to every single song that came on the radio.
Every single one.
But aside from that, he seemed pretty talkative and did a half decent job. You could’ve almost described him as…pleasant. But as shifts went by, 23 year old male established an unmistakable aura. In the past, I’d brushed aside comments he’d made about previous jobs he’d had, where he’d “left the waitresses to polish cutlery” purely because “it was their job”, or the fact that he took a fondness to “drinking beer and chasing tits”. But the more he went on (and on) (and on and on) it soon became clear that this was much more than just an aura. After much deliberation, I soon came to the conclusion that I was working with - what I’d previously thought to be – a typical, plain and simple, state of the art idiot. But it was on this particular Sunday afternoon that I realised he was so much more than that; there was seemingly a complexity to his idiocrasy that was unbeknown to me up until that point. He was, unmistakeably, a Colossalot.
The conversation went as follows. I happened to mention that I’d just served the two gentlemen sitting at Table 1 – two gentlemen that just so happened to be an openly homosexual couple. In response to this, he queried,
“What, are they like…gay?” squirming as if verbalising the adjective itself brought him physical pain. To this, I calmly retorted,
“Yes”.
I distinctly remember my eye twitching slightly; why some still feel the need to question sexuality based on assumption is beyond me.
He then proceeded to make a noise that I can only describe as sounding as if it had come from a snout, rolled his eyes unattractively into the back of his head as if partaking in some sort of seizure, and proclaimed,
“Eurgh. Don’t like gay people”.
I seem to remember a pause that lasted a good five to six seconds, finding myself genuinely believing he’d just tried and failed at some sort of humour, and managed to respond hopefully with,
“Are you joking?”
To cut a long story short, you can probably guess what his answer was. Colossalot had just made his first leap through the long grass. And so, of course, I had to make my first attack. My initial reaction was to persistently ask questions in the hope that he’d eventually realise the extent of his stupidity. Oh, if only it were that simple. I then, quite predictably, received a plethora of mind-numbingly clueless responses such as: “It’s just wrong”, “Men can’t have babies” and my personal favourite, “I’m not a Christian but God made men and women to be together” (no, honestly). So this question-and-answer style of debate lasted for a solid 5 minutes before I began using language that wouldn’t be appropriate for this article. (What can I say? I tried…)
If this was your average bigot, the debate may have relatively drawn to a close - if to a slightly unsatisfying one. But no, a Colossalot wouldn’t stop there. A Colossalot would just not be a Colossalot without going out of their way to offend to the best of their ability – it’s just what they do! So, he went on in his own happy and content way to discuss his next topic of conversation - women’s pay. Much to my horror. He used the example of Serena Williams…you might have heard of her, she’s that American tennis player who happens to be a woman and also happens to have won 22 Grand Slams, has altogether won 38 major titles in her career, and has been ranked No. 1 in singles six times. But whatever.
He persisted with something along the lines of,
“I definitely agree with the fact that women should be paid less in tennis - I just think people prefer watching men play. If you had to pick between Andy Murray and Serena Williams, you’d go for Murray, wouldn’t you?”
Colossalot makes his second strike, eager to hit hard with his use of offending-females-in-front-of an-actual-real-life-female. He has a deliberately provoking look in his eye, as if being intentionally antagonising. Which is another trait to look out for in Colossalots – deliberate antagonising. They take pleasure in disagreeing, to the extent that the opposing individual in the debate is forced into a furious rage to which a Colossalot may even laugh at, much to the opposition’s disgust.
I won’t bore you with the next four hours of my shift that day; it was as tedious and cyclical and dumbfounding as you would imagine it to be. The rest of the “debate” took a voyage into a whole range of controversial topics (well, controversial if you have the mind-set of someone like Farage or Trump), yet as much as I tried to persuade my new-found Colossalot friend that he was so profoundly wrong in his views, there’s just not a lot you can do with this breed of person. However, a good cold-shoulder and an occasional glare is both immensely satisfying and usually relatively successful.
The whole point of this story:
I’m sure I’m not the only person in the world to have come across someone like this in my lifetime. In fact, I’m certain I’m not. So in all seriousness, if you ever have the misfortune of coming into contact with someone like this, always challenge them – even if you feel like you’re getting nowhere (and most of the time, it probably will feel like that). As a generation, we can’t let ourselves be dictated by the bigots of the world: the Nigel Farages and the Donald Trumps, the intoxicated 60 year olds that sit behind the bar, the politicians that simply just don’t care. It seems like a small gesture to make someone aware that they can’t dislike someone based solely on their sexuality, or treat someone differently due to their gender, or deliberately call someone a “she” when they want to be known as a “he”, but that one small gesture will be a part of an altogether greater movement against prejudice and bigotry in our society. If we don’t challenge, then how can we expect change?
I’m aware that we will never be able to obliterate every single person with a bigoted mind-set – and after all, just because they hold views that may not correspond with what you personally believe in, it’s not to say that they are necessarily a bad person themselves. Well, not always. But attempting to make someone aware of their overt prejudice against a particular group of people, whether they are aware that they are doing it or not, is so important. And that’s what makes it more important – said individual may not even be aware of their prejudice themselves. A lot of the time, views are passed down through generations of bigotry - back to a time where women were seen as much lesser than men and to be gay was a crime - which really wasn’t that long ago at all. In fact, homosexuality was only legalised in 1967, and even then you still had to be over 21, AND homosexual acts had to be in private.
So really, it’s frustrating, but it’s also no wonder that traces of bigotry still remain in this day and age. This is why, as a new generation, it is so vital that we act now and stand up to the “Colossalots” and the bigots of this day and age; we weren’t born into a society of monumental injustice, nor should we let ourselves slip back into one.
Lucy Powderly