The Garbage People on the Internet

Last Thursday with the trolls

Hello and Happy Wednesday,

This dispatch might find you in holiday traffic or a grocery store but I hope it doesn’t find you at work and that you have some nice time off ahead filled with tasty foods and people and/or pets who nourish you.

Speaking of nourishment—or the opposite of nourishment—can I tell you something nasty that happened last week?

Images from FoamBrewers.com and Bay

I was coming home on the train from New York City (where my friend Justin Torres won the National Book Award for fiction for his latest novel, BLACKOUTS!) and I was scrolling Instagram, as one does. I saw a video from an account I follow called @fuckjerry which is put out by a content and advertising company called Jerry Media. The Buzzfeed of Instagram, fuckjerry aggregates (you could say regurgitates) online content and memes. That day, the account shared Ring camera footage some homeowner must have sent to them. The video showed a mailman drop a package on somebody’s porch, and then, for lack of a flowery phrase, the hardworking postman farts. Loudly and with gusto. He leaves. He keeps on working.

The fuckjerry team didn’t black or blur the postal worker’s face out. The name of his federal employer is clearly visible on his uniform. The audio is shared. I think we can all agree that there is a time and a place for a fart joke, and that time and place requires that the wind-maker be in on the joke.

I don’t usually jump into the pit of snakes that is the IG comment section, but that day I couldn’t help myself. “What an unnecessary violation of this man’s privacy,” I typed. “These ring cams are the worst.”

In hindsight, I know better than to write a sweeping generalization of one thing being bad. I could have thought that second part out more, made my gripe more specific: “Ring cams used as candid camera operations are the worst” or I don’t know what. But I wrote what I wrote and I went on with my life, riding the Hudson Valley Line, waiting for my stop.

By the time I got to my station, the troll cavalry had arrived on their mangey mules. Hundreds of blowhards chimed in to tell me what an idiot I was, what a “sad sack liberal,” that I should “cry and then go write a book about it,” or “discuss this with my therapist.” The bulk of the hate came from people incensed that I didn’t understand how privacy works, that this video was from a Ring cam at someone’s private home, and thus any privacy violations pertained only to the homeowner who had suffered the unforgivable offense of someone farting on their porch. I was told I was a moron; was asked if I was “for real”; was cursed with hopes that every package ever delivered to my house from then on was stolen by porch pirates.

I stared in horror at these messages which kept building up in number. It had to be a violation of privacy to post this man’s image and bodily function noises, and for all intents and purposes—his identity—without his knowledge to an online account with SEVENTEEN MILLION followers. In response to the people saying they had every right to post whatever footage they desired from their home cams, I wanted to inquire if their kid came to my door at Halloween and had peed his pants for some reason, and I decided to share that footage with the kid’s tears on his cheeks and urine on his panda pants and his identity clearly recognizable, that they wouldn’t yell “privacy infringement!!!” at me? I knew for sure they would. But I did not want to go any deeper into the snake pit; you can not win with trolls.

I fetched my car from the station parking lot and started driving home. Psychologically I could feel the hatred pouring into my phone. As I drove, I considered pulling over and deleting my comment because the last thing I needed during an already stressful month with plenty of confusion and hatred is more of the same filth.

But somebody needed to stick up for that poor postman! While there were people who defended me (and him) in their own comments, the trolls were gnawing at them, too. (A humans are the worst comment earning a humans who write humans are the worst are the worst response is an example of the vibes.) The snakes in the snake pit were eating their own tails.

Had these people never worked a difficult job, I wondered? Wherever this postman was located geographically, it looked hot. The postman’s walking around, he’s taking care to deliver whatever superfluous thing these dopes have bought on Amazon—for the time he’s working he doesn’t have access to a kitchen or a bathroom. So he lets one rip on somebody’s front porch. My God, who cares? Would the owners have preferred he dump the package curbside? Have these trolls never passed gas?

I just couldn’t understand it— it actually made me tremble to think that with everything going on in the world, real people dying brutally, lives being destroyed—these ass hats were devoting their energy to taking down a lady commenter who stuck up for a mailman rather than put themselves—for a millisecond—in the farting mailman’s shoes.

By the time I got home, I had an unfathomable amount of hate mail in the comments. But I refused to take my comment down. However, I also refused to ruin my evening with a barrage of verbal poison, so I unfollowed the fuckjerry account and blocked them, which probably removed my comment (I think?). I hope there are people out there still fighting the good fight for that gassy dude.

The point of me sharing this story with you is…well, mostly I wanted to share this story with you because even if it happened in the comment section of the Internet, it was horrible and scary. I made my Instagram account private to make the hateful comments stop, and also because I started to worry one of these nuts was going to find my address and come defecate at my front door or something.

A lot of you are traveling home this week to be with people who may (or may not) be jerkwads. Let’s not be the jerkwads. Stick up for people when it feels safe to. Be kind to someone who is fragile. And overtip your postal worker for the holidays.

It’s hard to argue with people who have lost the ability to empathize with others, but when you’re between a rock and a hard place with a hard person, try out this banger from comedian Ricky Gervais:

“Just because you’re offended doesn’t mean you’re right.”¹

Friends, I am closing to consultations and query reviews through the rest of the year and beyond to work with greater focus on what I hope is a new novel and to develop a suite of online classes that will expand on the craft tips and publishing secrets we explore on this Substack. In the comments, I’d love to hear what you would like an online class on. Any subject, any genre, in depth or superficial— let me know what would be of interest! In the meantime, I’m still running three self-paced online classes (memoir writing, book proposal writing and accountability).

And while I have you, check out these offerings through my friends at Writing Co-Lab! Amy even does query reviews, so if you wanted one from me, turn instead to her!

https://www.writingco-lab.com/classes

You can visit writingco-lab.com/classes for more information about these classes:

• Solving the Second Draft: Coaching and Accountability with Amy Shearn (10 classes starting January 31).

• Year-long novel intensive with Mila Jaroniec (starting January 2)!

There are even more classes on the Writing Co-Lab and they cost less than your standard grocery run.

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If you celebrate Thanksgiving, have a happy holiday— have a lovely long weekend either way. Thanks for being here before you set out to where you’re going.

And remember— let me know what you’d like to see a 2024 class on in the comments!

1. There is a great episode of the podcast “Smartless” where Gervais gets into his thinking behind this phrase, which was something he Tweeted a while back.