True Story©... Feeding Trolls
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I’m not a person you want to know is on your nerves or you don’t like…
At the big-ass age of 44 years and 356 days (this is a leap year), I got over the “try to make it right” shit sometime around the near-death experiences in 2003 and 2018. You don’t like me? Cool, I don’t particularly care for me either, but I love myself more than would allow me to stress myself to baldness over it, like ya mama did. To be completely honest, when I find out someone doesn’t like me – especially if I am already less-than-warm on them – I am moreso looking at how to make it WORSE than to try rectifying shit.
Die mad.
Y’all wanna know something funny about Al Gore’s Rhythm on the interwebs? Once you have interacted with someone/something – be it positive or negative – you’re more likely to come back across them/it when you’re online. Bear that in mind when that one asshole you seem to always find yourself disagreeing with on a mutual friend’s posts. Because you continue to back-and-forth with that dickhole, the system is designed to push that kind of interaction to increase both of your engagement on their platform.
Me? I learned this shit the hard way…
So I’m scrolling on my phone and a friend of mine posts a picture that I quickly eyeballed as AI, you need look no further than the images at the tops of my stories since last February to inform my eye as it relates to these things. People are up in arms about the controversy that would be if not for the fact that the image was fake as the asses on Instagram. One guy, who I have known since high school and frequently remove from the “People You May Know” for reasons that will soon become more obvious, writes this whole dissertation about the end of the world and a series of vague high-level nothings to resolve things in his opinion.
I responded simply “damn, bro, you really got it all figured out huh?” and was met with a cascade of responses suggesting that I didn’t know shit and was therefore a part of whatever problem he had made up in his head.
I responded with a screenshot zoomed in on the corner of the image showing gibberish and SEVEN fingers on one hand and advised him to “take his grievances up with the robots.” Needless to say, the people who saw my comment got the joke, evidenced by the number of laugh reacts.
We could consider that this would be the end of communication, as I am clearly more prepared to get people up off of me in this arena, right?
RIGHT?!!?
Wrong™!
Not three days later, same asshole is spouting new bullshit in a comments section in defense of a WNBA player whose name I will not say here. He was making points standing CLEARLY opposite of things she herself actually said aloud and CONFIDENT in his position, as a former high school athlete. His argument was that anyone who disagreed with him had clearly never played a minute of sportsball themselves and clearly lacked the informed knowledge that he possessed. I mentioned never acting on the “people you may know” thing before and my disinterest in picking things up from 25+ years ago, but now I have decided to completely poison whatever acquaintance there was in the 90s, responding “isn’t it refreshing to have the expertise of a WNBA professional among us? When was your surgery? I can barely tell you weren’t born like this!”
Again, the respondents on this VERY public post all got the joke and enjoyed seeing him publicly embarrassed in that way and the ☺ reacts on my comment spoke to that.
Scene Three…
It’s a Wednesday… I walk in the house on my lunch break from cutting the back yard and I’m scrolling The BookFace while my food warms. A female friend from school posts a picture of herself on the way out with her friends for her birthday. Her skin is glowing, her smile is great and her titties are titting.
Who else is FIRST in the comments offering to meet them wherever they go and first round’s on him. I should explain that I have had a “one of the homies” friendship with this girl since we were both 15, so my response DIRECTLY to him was not out of place when I said “you see them titties? I highly doubt she is paying for a single drink all night. I further doubt she is into letting you liquor her up to try to fuck.” It stands to reason that I know a joke has properly stung when the laugh reacts begin to roll in, but ESPECIALLY so when the “she/her” in question is first among them.
He’d had enough of my shit though…
“You still be working out in that park over on the East Side right? I’mma see you.”
[Phlip note: now why you wanna go and do that?]
Committed to continuing to burn fat in this current time of the slowing of my weight loss, I ain’t about to let a little semi-threat slow me down from these goals of mine.
One day, after work, I went over to mom’s house. I leashed her dog up and went on out into the parks for an hour or two. I round the corner and guess who is in front of me standing stone-faced with hands clenched? He approaches…
Him: “Whassup?”
Me: “Ain’t shit… Just me and Luna out here getting some miles before dinner.”
Him: “You ain’t got your lil keyboard out here now, huh?”
Me: “Actually my phone is right here on my right hip.”
I lifted the right side of my shirt to show my phone.
Him: “I told you I was gon' see you, all that shit you’s talkin’.”
Me: “You did say that.”
Him: “You ain’t got nothing funny to say now?”
Me: “I’m out here sweatin' like a pig, ain’t shit funny really.”
He takes a step closer.
Him: “Mmmhmm.”
Me: “Y’know what? This is juvenile, over some internet shit… What say we settle this over a game of ‘Glock Paper Scissors’?”
Him: “Rock paper scissors? You ass has always been childish… Whatever, let’s do it.”
Both of us: “One, two, three SHOOT!”
Him: “So what, you gon SHOOT me?”
Me: “I said GLOCK paper scissors. Now I’m entirely too damn old to be out here throwing hands trying to defend myself against a former women’s professional ball player.”
Him: “See? That’s that shit!”
Me: “And I ain’t pay $600 for this Sig to ever get beat up… Yo ass is going on a t-shirt!”
Him: “Man–…”
Me: “G’on and turn around and walk up that hill. You never saw me here today and you’ll never see me again, even if you DO see me.”
With defeat in his face, he walked backwards slowly away from me and the dog. When he had put enough distance between us, I turned and walked the other way.
Curiously, I went back to the “she ain’t trying to fuck you” comment thread when I got back to my mom’s house to find that he had likely blocked me.
He fed the troll and the troll won.
For the record, I hadn't even taken the safety off the pistol.
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