MY TROLL, MY TEACHER

To the Troll Who Said I Wasted Five Minutes of His Life

You’re a slow reader

I don’t usually read comments from readers who haven’t clapped. Not because I don’t value their opinion but because I’m not usually in the mood to be insulted. I used to thrive on being gaslit, mocked, and bullied but I gave it up for therapy.

These serial insulters, who we all know too well, want to educate us.

“Not only am I not going to clap,” they write. “I’m also going to tell you why I am not clapping.”

Lucky me. These trolls have an insatiable hunger to let me know how my story offended them. It’s never the blatantly offensive stories that piss them off either— like the one I wrote about autopsying Marjorie Taylor Greene’s clitoris. That one was very well received. No objections at all.

One reader bought me that cup of coffee we’re always asking readers to buy us. It was awkward since the only thing we had in common was a distaste for Marjorie Taylor Green’s autopsied clitoris, but we found common ground in the external genitalia whose function is to stimulate sexual pleasure. People are people.

It’s always the benign article like Bras that Keep Your Breasts from Dropping to Your Ankles that piss off my readers. Bras seemed like such safe content but trolls misinterpret everything. You write bras. They hear abortion. You write satire. They think you’re opposed to free automatic weapons for the PTA.

The greatest injury you can impose upon these trolls reading Medium articles at 2:30 p.m. is wasting their beautiful time. These are busy people. Heads of industry. Winners of prizes for Best Life.

These trolly comments remind me of one of my girlfriends who used to write her ex-boyfriends letters. This is over thirty years ago which is why they weren’t texts. Total play-by-play on how they did her wrong. She kept dates and incidents in her journal, so there was no contradicting her feelings.

My girlfriend read me one of these cringy letters. She was getting ready to send it to a recent boyfriend who dumped her. “He’s gonna feel soooo bad,” she said, putting a stamp on her envelope and sending it through the USPS — the fastest way to get your message across America.

I asked her, “Are we thinking of the same guy who takes his dick out at parties when he’s drunk and rubs them against everyone? You think he’s gonna feel bad?”

She responded, “Maybe the girl after me can benefit from what I’m teaching him.”

Trolls feel this way too. Like they’ve got the power to put a dick back in pants. In my friend’s defense, she was only 14 and got her period thrice a month. I think most of my trolls are from the 45–70-year-old hair club for men sect. It’s an educated guess because I claim to be educated.

Trolls are pretty dumb in general and if they’re smart, they have terrible time management. Yes, I am judging their life decisions. They could be out there conquering the world but instead, they’re reading my two-minute neurotic self-flagellation article in five minutes.

Everyone is invited to read my stories. I welcome it, but it is not mandatory. I’m not holding a dick to their head and saying “Read!”

I have a question for the troll who said I wasted five minutes of his life on a two-minute read. Are you a slow reader, sir? I only meant to waste two minutes of your life.

We all waste time. I dated someone who told me I wasted a year of his life but he wasted five of mine. I’ve wasted hundreds of hours of my life thinking of shit I should have said to people but was too afraid to.

Remember that excellent book about becoming a speed reader in a week. I never understood why everyone’s copy was either waterlogged or covered in urine. Did everyone learn to read faster while taking a powerful piss?

Or, was there only one of these books published in all of America? And it was being passed around like one big joint becoming urinier and urinier?

My troll would have benefitted from that book. He could have read my two-minute article in 20 seconds. Think of all that time he wouldn’t have wasted. Four minutes and forty seconds — a fucking lifetime.

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