Conversation with My Wife (06)
Trolls and elves and pseudonyms
ME: “I don’t believe this! I’m getting trolled on Medium in my ‘Conversation with My Wife’ series!”
DEB: <quizzical, please-explain look>
ME: “Trolls are people who create IDs on Medium just so they leave nasty or irrelevant comments to things other people posted. I had people leave not-nice comments about women in that post I did about the First Law of Holes.”
DEB: “So there are trolls on Medium?”
ME: “Yes.”
DEB: “Can the elves help?”
ME: <after running through answers in my head> “There aren’t any elves on Medium.”
DEB: “That doesn’t seem fair. Shouldn’t you get elves?”
ME: <running through a few smart-ass answers before settling on> “Sure. I’ll bring it up at the next meeting. I’m sure Gutbloom will get right on it.”
DEB: “You have meetings? And they’re run by someone named ‘Gutbloom’?”
ME: “Okay, no, we don’t really have meetings, and ‘Gutbloom’ is just a pseudonym. Like H. Nemesis Nyx and Alexainie and JB and Rocket Worley and walkerjojones and SF Ali and Violet Oh Violet, to name a few.”
DEB: “Oh! What’s your pseudonym?”
ME: “I don’t have one. I’m just me.”
DEB: “That doesn’t seem fair. Why not?”
ME: “I don’t need one. Some people are more comfortable with one. Like JB used to be [REDACTED] but was getting hassled by trolls, so she switched to a pseudonym.”
DEB: “That’s not very nice. Why doesn’t anyone stop the trolls?”
ME: “Some people go after them, like H. Nemesis Nyx and SF Ali and Violet Oh Violet and Heath Houston (Heath is the one who wrote the poem I used in that card I made for you). But those sort of folks tend to be braver than the rest of us. Also occasionally kinda batshit-crazy, but don’t tell them I told you that.”*
DEB: “So they are like warrior elves on Medium?”
ME: <pausing to ponder> “Not how I would have thought of them, but okay. They might even take that as a compliment.”
