Sometimes I’m Not Nice

Posted on April 23, 2002    Posted by John Scalzi

Note to any alt.support.childfree folks still loitering around. About yesterday’s piece: You Have Been Trolled. Not only have you been trolled, but it was a cross-platform troll; I didn’t even have to go over to your newsgroups and message boards to do it. I just slipped a note to a particularly excitable member of your breed and waited for him to do the rest, which of course he did. Thanks for amusing me for a day. Now, back to your holes, if you please.

Actually, most of the e-mails I’ve gotten about the subject are from fairly moderate childfree types who want to emphasize to me that not all childfree people want to see children and parents boiled in hot fat. And of course, I know this is true; I don’t expect that any of those folks would see what I wrote as applying to them. They have a little more sense than that.

No, yesterday’s bit was pretty much designed to enrage the dim and enrageable, which it did, judging from newsgroup and message board responses. Why did I bother? Oh, I don’t know. I guess I just like to poke at dumb animals from time to time.

***

I’ll be the first to admit that such trollage does not bring out the best side of me, but, look, I’m going to be honest with you: Being nice all the time is a real snooze. Every once in a while it’s fun to go off on a tear. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been especially ventful, and you know what? It’s been both fun and profitable. I’ve already cashed the check for the “I Hate Your Politics” reprint, for example, and I’ve had a ball antagonizing patronizingly annoying people on all sides of the parental issue. These are people who I feel quite frankly need some antagonizing, because, well, they’re bigass jerks (and besides, they started it. All of them). So not only am I doing a public service afflicting the excitable, I’m getting paid while I’m doing it. It’s a good life.

Again, I cheerfully admit that this particular attitude does not make me look any less of an asshole than the people I’ve been trading whacks with. However, it’s not like I actually care. I know my own soul and I’m not worried about its disposition. Taunting child haters or deadbeat-dad lovers or the politically tightly-wound on the Web is a low-impact sport. It’s just hot air and sparks. At the end of the day, I walk away from my computer and don’t think about any of it anymore, and I sincerely hope for their own mental well-being that others I’m having a hissy-fit with do the same thing.

Fundamentally, this is recreation. It’s not the really real world. I’m often serious in this space, but sometimes I’m not. I’m usually nice and reasonable, but occasionally I’ll ditch that face and put on another. Sometimes I go off and do something stupid, just to see what happens. Sometimes I taunt dumb animals just to hear ’em growl. If they’re dumb enough to do it, well, more fun for me. An admirable quality? Probably not. But if it’s the worst I do on a regular basis, the world is pretty safe from me.