It Is A Bad Idea To Annoy A Writer

Some links before I get started today.  Norma had an excerpt from Sam's Story. The Square Dogs had a toy review at Parsnip's blog. And the Whisk had pizza at her page.

Now then, something rather different for today. Don't worry, I'll be back with something more amusing on the weekend.

Social media and the anonymity it provides can be a fertile ground for those miscreants and knuckledragging wastes of oxygen otherwise known as trolls. They spend all day in a basement picking fights with others over nothing, seemingly for hours on end. While most of us spend a certain amount of time a day and that's all in places like Facebook or twitter, your average (well, they're below average in intelligence and social skills) troll seems to have nothing else to do with their day. They certainly have no friends. 

There's a total waste of space who spends all day on the message boards at Facebook for the CBC. He uses the avatar of a dead whackjob right wing commentator and goes by the surname Kiechle. He spends all day attacking anything and anyone who dares criticize the Prime Minister, lashes out at the CBC as an organization, and disregards facts and reality. Looking at his time stamps on his comments in any given day, and there is literally nothing else this guy does with his day. Unlike those of us who have other things to do, this is all he does. In the past, I've engaged the prat (well, why sugar coat it? The man's an asshole), but these days I rarely do. It's easier just to write the bastard into a novel and have him meet a very bad end. For some reason I think he'd do very well as a white supremacist villain. It probably fits his personal belief system anyway.

And then there's Ford Nation.

You have seen my occasional musings from the point of view of the drug addled mayor of Toronto (and more of those to come before the election finally turfs the idiot out at the end of October). As much as he and his reprehensible family disgust me, his continuing support from demented remnants of Ford Nation disgusts me more. 

These are voting citizens who refuse to see the abomination for what he is: totally unfit for office, a repulsive excuse for a human being. Any story about the man or his associates on Facebook will bring them out with the same tired comments. "Ford More Years!" "Leave the man alone, he's doing a great job!" "Like any of you have never made a mistake." "Gravy train! Billion dollars saved!" 

These drooling morons swallow whatever tag line the Ford family spew, regardless of the total disregard for reality of those tag lines. And they scream bloody murder when you call them out for their stupidity. But what else can we call them but idiots? Only a fool pledges total devotion to a man who never learns from his mistakes, never has shown the slightest sign of intelligence or personal growth, a man who cannot work with others, who suffers from delusions of grandeur, many addictions, and a raging temper, a man who lies every time he opens his mouth, a man who opens himself up to criminal extortion by hanging around with drug dealers feeding his addictions.

And they will never learn. The man could run them down while driving drunk and they would still stick up for him. There's no point trying to reason with them, trying to be civil, trying to make them see reality. They're so far gone. So instead of figuratively banging your head against a wall trying to do that, it's much more productive (and amusing) to heckle them. I have done that myself, and sure enough, the usual suspects will turn up throwing all sorts of accusations and rants around. They seem oblivious to the notion that many of us have had as much as we can take of the Ford circus, so why not make fun of them?

There has been one in particular, however, who has crossed a line. Her comment history is a painfully brutal record of profound stupidity and lack of judgment. She is one of the true die-hards of Ford Nation, so devoted to the man that he could plow down every member of her family driving drunk, set their bodies on fire, and relieve himself on her, and she'd still be cheerleading for the blowhard.

I have called her out on her inane defense of the indefensible from time to time. Many others have called her intelligence into question, with good reason. I've asked if her parents were breeding too close to the gene pool, what the colour of the sky is in her world, and why it's acceptable in her mind to vote for a wife beating misogynist drug addict. She reacts in the usual way, denying the man is what he is (denial is a big thing in what passes for the brains of Ford Nation).  A few days ago she left a reply in a comment post directed at me. She suggested my computer must be filled with child pornography.

Read that last sentence again.

Accusing someone of possessing child porn is crossing one hell of a damned line.

Others called her out on it by the time I read it. That's a good thing. Not that she'll learn a damned thing by it. There are certain lines, in arguments, that you do not cross without certainty. She did. It's slander, and you can imagine, it made me angry.

I thought about it, and aside from her devotion to the Ford Abomination, there's another reason I have such a dislike for her. She reminds me of my sisters: a shrill, bitter, miserable harpy. Her just being herself rates as a life sentence.

So what to do? I thought of a lawyer (and if this persists, that is an option). As a writer though, I have other options too. I've decided to write her in (just change a letter or two in her name) as a thoroughly miserable, vile character with no redeeming quality whatsoever. Who she'd be beyond that, and where she'd fit in, would be another matter. Needless to say, the real deal would not appreciate the way she gets rendered in a book.

Don't annoy a writer. We tend to take things personally. And your character will end up meeting a very bad end.