An Open Invitation to the Trolls: Go Intercourse Yourself
A Sunday Rant
For reasons beyond my limited comprehension, I wake up angry on Sunday mornings. This is even after one cup of coffee and two cigarettes, which is my pre-writing routine every day. Thus, Sundays seem to be the time I rant the most (percentage-wise, at least).
This particular Sunday morning I was catching up on some Facebook posts by Medium friends, having spent nearly five hours last night binge-watching the WWII series Generation War (dubbed the German Band of Brothers). What I found in several posts, most notably by Sarah Paris and David Graham, was discussion about the ever-present time and energy-suck that is negative commenting trolls.
We’ve all dealt with them, of course. Some are nameless, faceless commenters with no followers and an ax to grind. Others are your flat-Earther, the-election-was-stolen aunt or uncle who discovered that you write. For me they tend to pop up most often in any history article that dares suggest the Confederacy was not the high point of American culture.
Like many, in the beginning I tried to engage these ass-hats in meaningful dialogue, forgetting that in the echo chamber that is 2021 that is about as useful as continuing to tweet at Springsteen that I want him to play my next birthday party; after decades of…
