Escaping Trolls

February 24th, 2022, started out as an awful day, and it worsened as it progressed.

Early that morning, I had driven forty miles to take a friend to the hospital for scheduled life-saving surgery. (Happily, that was successful.) Later in the day, I had accompanied a loved one to a doctor's appointment, only to find that the soreness was due to lung cancer. Not the best of days by any means.

At home later, I took a look at my email box, full and recently ignored. It was surprising and heartening to see the name Becca. As always with her correspondence, the subject line was curiously blank.

In 2020, Becca had severed our decades-long friendship, voicing irrational thoughts and imagining all kinds of falsehoods about me. As she would never have a conversation with me to clarify any of her incorrect hypotheses, for goodness sake she didn't even know my political party, the source of her outrageous misbeliefs was both mysterious and disconcerting. Her final email to me over a year prior, before she ghosted me, said my words would not matter due to the blanket of evil brought about by the crooked left and high tech. At the time, I mourned her descent into delirium. But on this day, in optimistic excitement, I opened her email.

Bam!! She was definitely not over her petty weirdness. Sadly she was not back to normal; her sassy no-nonsense New Yorker smarts were still on hiatus.

Her attack, the G-rated version: "Are you happy with your president's work for this country? You think Russia influenced Trump. I say Biden voters, you have blood on your hands. Biden started the war. He's weak and unable to curb it. Your kids will be drafted, unless maybe your friends can keep them out of it. WW3, Putin, Xi, world domination. Our friendship was ended by my rage, my disgust for Joe's election, I knew this would be the result, why didn't you?"

Wow. That was some declaration. As Meg Ryan's character Angelica says to Joe (Tom Hanks) in Joe Versus The Volcano, "I have no response to that." Yet my emotions swirled - confusion, anger, pain, deep sorrow.

I'm a journaler. In response to events, I write. Six long pages of reply were churned out and edited over the next little while. Many scenarios were created, emails which would never be sent. Everything from 'youch! that hurts!' to a snarky "forget to take your meds?' to an offensive 'you're out of your mind!' Joan Didion mused, "I don't write for catharsis; I have to write to understand." Yes, pounding the keyboard helped. It felt good. It truly worked, getting my feelings out, sorting through what was going on, interpreting her outburst, seeing where this was coming from. The act of creating responses to this stealth assault was healing.

I felt abused, assailed in my home office. Yet I know that she has always been fragile, with private problems that I wasn't about to add to. The thought I finished with was 'calm down, get a handle on your rage, and go take care of your family.' Not a perfect reply but I felt it was a bit uplifting. Plus this final statement was a message for me to stop obsessing about this and move on. She went low, I wanted to go high. I would not, I did not, reply.

I thought about this for awhile longer, then hopped onto social media to see what recent grim brutality might have swept her up. Instead of horror, I found a brilliantly meaningful poem, precisely what I needed to read right then. The beauty of the words sent tears down my cheeks, the purity of it made her strike irrelevant. I would be able to ignore this rude invitation to squabble. And I felt so much better.

That night, however, was another story. Tossing and turning, I remembered past conversations, hearing about her dark place and her mentions of suicide. Was all of this a cry for help? I should do something. Blocked from her phone, how could I engage without email? Snail mail was out of the question. Could I call a suicide hotline in another state? How could I help? Apprehensively, I decided I should reach out to her husband.

The next morning, I carefully crafted my words until I was satisfied with my message. With my script in hand, I called his number, but he didn't answer. No! His voice mailbox was full, I was disappointed that I could not even leave my voice message. Back to the drawing board as a short and caring text was now needed. I wrote: "Hey, I'm worried, Becca sent an email yesterday about the Ukraine war, she's in a huge rage and is directing it at me. Would you please check on her? If you need me, I'm here as a friend."

No reply received. Phew! I really did not want to engage, I'd had enough of that poisonous pen. However, reaching out helped to relieve my conscience, just in case she was in trouble.

**

March 7. There was a text on my phone from the hubby. It was on again.

"Please no gaslighting! Your president started this war. Rage is warranted. Thanks."

Given that her husband neither speaks nor writes in this style, perhaps she had been snooping through his cell phone and spotted my text. Although, with 'please' and 'thanks,' one wonders.

Gaslighting? I'd heard the word, but didn't know what that actually meant. It was surprising to find that I, the victim of an unprovoked attack, was accused of psychologically manipulating her. Huh? I also read that it's a QAnon thing. I needed to look that up too, obviously not having cared enough about any of this stuff to learn the lingo.

Mike Wendling, in his BBC News article "QAnon: What is it and where did it come from?" writes that "At its heart, QAnon is a wide-ranging, completely unfounded theory that says that President Trump is waging a secret war against elite Satan-worshipping paedophiles in government, business and the media." Wikipedia (4/4/22) calls QAnon "a political conspiracy theory that later evolved into a political movement. It originated in the American far-right political sphere. QAnon centers on false claims made by an anonymous individual or individuals known as 'Q'." Indeed. Becca certainly had made false claims.

Again, cautious contemplation before writing a return text. I still considered her to be a misguided friend, and I certainly did not want to cause distress, but I needed to offer an explanation. I texted to hubby: "Sorry I didn't mean to put you between us but I'm worried. She's told me in the past that she's been suicidal, and the rage of her email scares me. I'm glad she's OK and I wish the best for all of you." Maybe I overstepped my bounds on this, but it was the best that I could come up with; I was worried about her.

No reply received. What a welcome relief.

**

Silly me, so complacent. On March 15, I was doing a little doomscrolling on social media, not something I did very often any more. I came across an in-bad-taste political cartoon featuring Biden that a different friend had put on his page way back on March 5. A friend we had in common. Of all things, Becca had replied to it.

Becca: A liberal friend told me yesterday that the Ukrainian war was caused by Trump! So delusional, it was PedoJoe!! She still calls me crazy for voting Trump!!!! She says I'm having issues and contacted my husband! This ghosting comment was very threatening!! PedoJoe voters are delusional!

Lee: Seriously? Stupid is as stupid does. I'm sure she's been sniffing glue.

Unbelievable! I'd been smacked by trolls! These flat out lies from her were extremely disturbing. I had told her nothing, we hadn't talked in years, way before the war in Ukraine. And "PedoJoe," how odd that someone would actually write that. Wendling's BBC News article alluded to PedoJoe and high tech ideas. Had she become a crazy QAnon lady?

I pictured the two of them sharing evil little chortles as they posted their backstabbing comments. I called Lee, but got his voicemail. My message: please contact me, I'm sad to see your unkind response to her comments, ask me about it, please remove it. No reply received. A week later, I sent him a message again asking him to remove it. No reply received. Interestingly, since then, Lee had put up a meme which included a quote by American journalist and author Anna Quindlan that said, "Ignorance is not bliss, it's stupid." What a hypocritical thing for him to post, as he was ignorant of the truth, and unwilling to hear another side. There you go, Lee, stupid is as stupid does, and I think that's a quote from Mrs. Gump.

At this point, were they still my friends? Becca, Lee and I met as professional colleagues in 1992, and then friendships blossomed. We'd all had typical ups and downs, but in general, they were joyous and fun, pleasures to be around, and we had shared histories that had been important to me.

In "The Secrets of Lasting Friendships" (New York Times, March 24, 2022), David Brooks speculates, "our happiness in life, as well as our health and fulfillment, is hugely dependent on our ability to be skillfully understanding of and considerate toward others. A lot of the bitterness and alienation in our country flows from the fact that our social skills are inadequate to the complex society we now live in." In Becca's email, as in Becca's and Lee's social media exchange, I didn't see consideration in regard to any person, let alone a friend. Author and evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar writes about building and maintaining human friendships in his recent book Friends: Understanding the Power of Our Most Important Relationships. One idea is that friendships begin based on similarities, along the lines of 'birds of a feather flock together.' It seems as if their flock had morphed, to keep the analogy going, away from the bluebird of happiness into a murder of crows.

**

I talked to some true friends about this series of events, and they were aghast that I was attacked by trolls posing as friends. When talking with my internet-savvy kids and their real life friends, a wise 20-something told me “the internet isn't real, and those who believe it is are damaged.” Yes, I could see that. Gen Z members seem to know a lot about maneuvering around social media, avoiding internet fallacies and ignoring trolls.

Seeking a little more information on this, I found "Trolls Aren´t Like the Rest of Us," an enlightening article by Arthur C. Brooks in The Atlantic (March 2022). Brooks reports, "If you use the internet, the odds are about even that you´ll be mistreated there. A 2021 Pew Research report found that 41 percent of U.S. adults have personally experienced some form of online harassment. Fifty-five percent think it is a 'major problem.' Seventy-five percent of the targets of online abuse say their most recent experience was on social media." He calls online abusers "bullies with personality disorders." He notes, "Many people who engage in online harassment are not what most of us would consider to be well-adjusted."

Another 20-something said “the hurt cause hurt.” Obviously there were many levels of hurt that Becca must have been feeling in order to lash out at me through email, especially in such a painful manner. Why would she abuse me by posting mean lies on social media? Lee also upset me with his immediate and unsubstantiated agreement, despite his stated intolerance of ignorance.

***

The course of these events took place while the sick friend recovered and the family member began radiation treatment. As if I needed more trouble in my life, this dark energy retained its hold on me, despite my new-found knowledge of trolls and the recognition of true friends who talked through my cyberbullying problem with me.

A few days ago, I saw an announcement for The Moment of Freedom Challenge on Vocal Media. Echoing the struggle in Ukraine, the challenge was to write a story about freedom. As a visual person, as I read this, I literally saw the image of a light bulb going on over my head as an epiphany hit me – I could cast off that metaphorical cloak of darkness that had burdened me, because – it just didn't matter.

They are damaged. They are hurt. They are ignorant. I'm very sorry for their problems, but they are not my problems. And with that realization, I am free.

(Written for the Vocal Media "The Moment of Freedom" Challenge.)