NaBloPoMo Day 23: Fun With Internet Trolls

 I've been trying to decide if this post should come before or after my Trying Not to Be an Asshole to Assholes on the Internet Anymore post (I backslid a little last night, on a post that asked if people were nearly done their holiday shopping yet, which brought out the appallingly entitled Fake Christians with their 'what do you mean HOLIDAY shopping? Do you mean CHRISTMAS shopping?' bullshit.) 

I follow a personal blog page on Facebook called Cranky Fat Feminist, which I love. It's not a private group and not moderated, so a lot of the posts get considerable flak from anti-feminist dickweasels. A while back she posted about a study involving twins that suggested strongly that dieting is neither a one-size-fits-all (weak laugh) solution to obesity nor a necessarily effective one - in fact, dieting may very well cause subsequent weight gain. It was just a post, not an article or an insistence that this was one hundred percent correct, but for people (like me) who think diets are a scourge on the world, it really resonated. 

Naturally some diet-obsessed wanker piped up "this is ridiculous! Just because you FAIL at a diet doesn't mean it's the diet's FAULT, it's YOUR fault." This kind of thing makes me see red, as overweight people are constantly made to feel that it's their fault when they can't sustain unsustainable eating and exercise habits (The Biggest Loser, anyone?). I said as much, much more politely than I felt like. 

Naturally her next comment was "I had a peek at your profile. I can see why you'd want to believe the study." This did NOT make me see red. I'm a woman on the internet who expresses opinions from time to time, duh, I've been called fat and ugly more times than The Daily Mail has posted a "Skinny Adele goes about her life being skinny and clearly nothing else matters except the fact that she's skinny" headline. I responded "yeah, I figured you'd get around to calling me fat. I actually tend to believe scientific evidence whether it reinforces my natural biases or not, but go ahead with waving your little troll arms and legs around. It's probably good cardio."

I was pleased with this retort to a really unattractive degree, and ready to leave it there. Of course she lost all pretense to equanimity and started frothing that I sounded bitter and jealous and like I needed to get all my validation from social media. I calmly said that it seemed like she was the one who needed validation, which was why she was insisting on believing that dieting yourself to weight loss meant some kind of moral superiority. I said I was occasionally jealous of my friends, but usually because of their talent and kindness, none of which she was currently displaying, but hey, at least she was thin.

Someone else in the group then spoke up and said clearly this Jasmine character was bent on being spiteful and unwilling to hear reason, so why waste my breath? I said "yeah, I know. Don't feed the trolls. It's just that this one looked hungry. You know... because of all the dieting."

I KNOW it doesn't make me a good person that I'm proud of all this, but it seemed like a good one to go out on. 

It's not a troll, but it kind of looks like a bridge