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2013-12-06T11:15:00.000-08:00

Confessions of a Troll

2013-08-05T22:36:00.001-07:00

I have to make a confession. Something that may come as a shock to some of you. For the most part, I use the internet for it's intended purposes, stealing music, ordering research chemicals, looking at pornographic drawings of my favorite childhood cartoons, and laughing at exes who have crossed the threshold of obesity after birthing a few semi-retarded kids, . Despite my good intentions the majority of the time, I sometimes dabble in recreational malevolence. Unlike the majority of the trolls in the world, it isn't that I had a bad childhood, or that I'm bored spending my days in my mom's basement, jerking off to the idea of beating Olivia Munn in a game of strip-Starcraft, while pouring Totino's pizza rolls and Mountain Dew down my morbidly husky gullet. It simply amuses me, the way a cat amuses itself with a mouse that it will never eat. To put it simply, I like to fuck with idiots because it is fun. Other times, I have a serious point to make, and nothing makes a point quite like a heavy dose of sarcasm and satire.

It all started when I was about 12. Back in those days, there were no websites, and high speed internet was thousands of dollars per month. When I say "high speed," I mean high speed for it's time. It was about as fast as the shittiest level of service that your provider offers these days. There are literally kids in Africa today, with flies on their faces, eating unwashed warthog rectum off whatever passes as a plate there, who have faster internet than what cost thousands of dollars a month in the 90s, all thanks to Oprah. In the 90s, I had to use a dial up modem, which cost me a couple hundred dollars, just to dial in to local bulletin boards where there was nothing but text. It took just as long to drive to some seedy news stand and get the latest issue of Lemon People as it did to download the image of a naked woman. I'm not talking about a photo either, porn looked like this back then.

Just looking at this brings back memories. This is when artists got creative and started doing stuff like adding color. Just look at her nipple. It's actually red. In it's day, that was like upgrading from Playboy to Hustler. Ask your grandfather about it. Watching this load up on your monitor, which probably closer resembled a 12" fish bowl than a monitor of today, was like watching a quadriplegic type with their eyes.

In the 90s, there were trolls, but they were hardly creative. Most attempts at trolling were kids saying, "AHh... Y3r a l4m3r. Eat sp3rm 8====D~~~ ~ ~ 0-B" Which seems ridiculous now, but at the time, it was mind blowing to consider that your computer just converted a crude text drawing of an ASCII face, swallowing a load of tildes from an alphanumeric dick, complete with balls, into a bunch of Skrillex-esque noises and made it pop up in other peoples homes. After a while though, it got old. That is when we started to team up. I was asked to join a team of internet funny people and assholes, who called themselves JÆ, basically I wrote a bunch of sarcastic articles and HOWTO guides about absolutely nothing, under the nom de plume "krewl", a name that I haven't managed to escape after 20 years. I still run into the occasional person yelling "Krrrrrreeeeeeewllllll" from their car window as I walk down the street or while I'm grocery shopping.

Quite a bit of time has passed since then. Stupid children have grown up to be stupid adults, with stupid spouses and stupid children of their own. They've learned the basics of politics, from news headlines and email their parents have forwarded them. They did a semester of community college, so they're educated. One time, they even did acid at Bonnaroo, so they're a whole lot deeper than they used to be. If you get them drunk enough, they'll tell you how they are spiritual, not religious, and they will tell you the difference between the two, just like the time they told you the difference between "niggers" and "black people."

Now, it might sound like I have a bit of contempt for the general public, but the truth is that they fascinate me. I admit, sometimes I have a hard time relating to them. I feel a bit like Joseph Merrick when I'm in a bar and I'm the only one not wearing a TapouT shirt, doing Cuervo shots, looking for an orange butt to put an STI in. However, most of the time, I feel like a puppeteer. I know exactly what reaction I am going to get when I pull a specific string. People who are passionate about something are easy targets, they are usually so intense about their point of view, that they do not notice at all when they are being trolled, all they know is that your opinion is different than theirs. Maybe you want to find some people who are passionate about saving the Earth, and tell them that you hope the polar bears hurry up and go extinct, because they are so desperate to procreate due to climate change, that they have been raping humans in fishing villages. If anybody disputes the authenticity of the story, just claim that Japanese scientists have reported several cases, or just that "studies have shown." Because nobody can argue with studies or science.

Trolling doesn't have to be words at all. You just have to have an idea, because anything you think of EVER already exists. This artist drew a pretty good Hoatzin (Pronounced watt-zeen... like Hoatzin yer mouf bitch, oh, my bird dick!). To show my appreciation, I shared this drawing of a beaked, hairy, dick with legs and wings. Why did I have a picture of this fine feathered phallus? Because I thought it would be funny, and I Googled it. Google has a picture of everything, before you even think of it. Give it a try.

Sometimes, it is necessary to troll, just to remind people that this is the internet, not therapy. If you walked into a psychiatrists office, and saw a talking dog, a girl fucking a horse, ten guys promising you ten different ways to add three inches to your penis, and a billion barely literate cats asking for cheeseburgers in the waiting room, you would probably find somewhere else to vent about your fucked up life.

Eventually, your friends will probably get pretty sick of you laughing at their relationships and bird drawings, so you'll have to branch out to random strangers. The easiest group to troll are Christians on Facebook. They're pretty much the most evil, unforgiving people on the planet. Don't worry, they aren't going to turn the other cheek, but they will definitely engage you in the stupidest of arguments. If that gets old, there are always the people who start causes that don't make sense. The people who think changing your profile picture to a stuffed animal is going to stop people for murder children, or that taking your photo with Skittles is going to get justice for Trayvon.

Natural disasters are also good troll fodder. Especially when mixed with religious craziness.

I'm sure that we can all agree (or at least most of us) that child murder is a horrible thing. Stupidity is a pretty horrible thing too, and that happens far more frequently. Sometimes offending people is the only way to open their stupid eyes to how stupid their stupid brain is.

Other times, you're just being horrible. I'm not saying you should go troll kids with leukemia or dead soldiers or anything like that. The Westboro Baptists have that niche covered, and they're doing a fine job. However, if you're feeling a little bored, it is always a good time to stop by the Bulimia Nervosa Research and Treatment for Teens page and engage in a little slap n' tickle with the scabby knuckled scarf and barfers. Play your cards right, and you might just end up with a wife that isn't ever going to leave you, regardless of what you say to her.

Lastly, it is important that people know that trolls leave their houses. There is nothing like real life trolling. Have the balls to go out into the world and show people that you are a jerk. If you're the shy type, put it on a t-shirt or a bumper sticker.

People like to ask me if there is anything I won't say. Definitely. There is a code. I don't condone hate speech or bullying. Chances are, if something sounds ignorant, it is to make you think about how ignorant it is. If something I say offends you, I am sorry, but if something I say doesn't offend you, I'm even more sorry. The scariest thing I ever encounter is somebody agreeing with me.

I guess I have to start somewhere...

2013-01-06T22:26:00.003-08:00

I sat and glared, my mind reached out helplessly, like the sole survivor of a capsized ship, desperately seeking anything to grasp hold of, coming back with nothing but handful after handful of morbid curiosity and absolute horror. His vacant eyes rolled back into his head, as he thrust his pelvis violently, cock-whipping the sagging crotch of his ill-fitting jeans, as if it were well-trafficked rug being being cleaned by the pendulous swings of an old straw broom. A halo of wild brown fuzz engulfed his head, like Christ in Majesty, remaining completely stationary despite the chaos ensuing below. Dressed in full bum regalia, from the too-short jeans that hovered nearly a foot above his worn shoes, to the over stuffed winter coat, which if it had a tag, would have likely read "Hand wash only. 70% garbage bag, 30% Duct tape." His tongue darted rhythmically, back and forth, over the few small and sparse jagged Chiclets that clung desperately to his gums. Like battered lovers, they would never leave him, despite his neglect. He reminded me a bit of Frederick Douglass, if Frederick Douglass had thrown in the towel on the whole abolishonist gig and turned to a life of angel dust and dirty dancing. Under any other circumstances, a sight like this wouldn't have been out of the ordinary, the weird tend to be drawn to me, the way aliens are drawn to Reese's Pieces, or Bluetooth headsets and gold chains are drawn to Persians. This, however, was a children's party, on New Year's Eve, where gratuitous dick flailing to Sugarhill Gang's "Apache" seems to sway just a tad to the side of inappropriate.

Somehow, a strange young pullet had been attractive to this mans bizarre mating ritual. A good three feet shorter than him, she looked to be about twenty from behind and fifty from the front. She was wearing some kind of hot pink dress, that could have easily been patched together from parts of a high school prom dress, a few scraps of lingerie and possibly a bit of leather fetishwear or a Thriller jacket that she just couldn't part with. With her gaunt cheeks, she grinned up at her partner's face, revealing a complete lack of molars. Although she seemed to be aiming for seductive, her smile said "fit me with a bridle" more than "come get me, you black stallion." Her hair was short and jagged, dyed one of those Hot Topic colors that she should have grown out of a few decades ago.

Now here I am, watching Dirty Dancing in the Hood meets Return of the Living Dead, suffering the absolute worst case of "discontinuation syndrome", a friendly little term that doctors like to use when you're withdrawing from all the good, legal drugs that they like to dispense like Pez. Withdrawal is a nasty term. You only withdraw from drugs when you're dead broke, you already pawned your mom's TV, stole all the copper pipes from her house, and you're fresh out of stranger dicks to suck for fast cash. Discontinuation syndrome on the other hand, is just the shit that you go through when you've had enough with synthetic apathy, and trudging muddled-mindedly through the lukewarm swamps of the working world, and stop taking those illegible little Post-It notes to the white coat dope dealer at the local pharmacy. Take a minute to imagine the worst flu you have ever had, and multiply the discomfort of that by about nine thousand. Not that "shit your pants in public" flu that people like to claim they have, after eating five pounds of shrimp at the local Phoenix Panda Moon Dragon China Buffet. That isn't the flu. That is just a case of not giving a fuck that Phoenix Panda's on staff crustacean surgeon took a day off, and you devoured a few hundred of those little critters, poop chute completely intact. I'm talking the real flu. The aching, sweating, can't hardly breath, feeling like you had an unprotected triple x throwdown with Gaëtan Dugas in the early 80s, waking up on the bathroom floor type flu. This was hell.. if hell had tunnel vision, pointed directly at some strange zombie mating ritual.

A Long Plastic Hallway

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Confessions of a Troll

I guess I have to start somewhere...