Episode #113: When You Troll, Nobody Can Hear The Crickets Of Indifference

Wishing for it to be Spring already, with the mountain in bloom, the chimes gently swaying in the breeze and leaving a cacophony of manufactured sound in its wake.

Hi-dee-ho neighborettes and welcome to my corner of the world, where nothing is as it seems, and we gosh darn like it like that.

Since I really couldn't think of anything related to the Average American Novel this week beyond a word count update:

Total: 49,502.

Handwritten: 26,682.

Percentage: 53.9%.

And mentioning that I just transcribed chapter 15 and that I have two more chapters to go, I decided to touch upon the mini-trolling I do in my spare time, both in the real world and on FB.

Being retired means I have a lot of spare time on my hands to help out with things like pesky telemarketers. Our house has done a really decent job at whittling them down to less than five per day, and I like to think I've had a hand in that reduction.

Depending on the telemarketing scam and who is performing it, I'll either play stupid or be a complete misogynistic butt-hole.

I will often answer in a voice that's a cross between a man and a woman in a sing-song tone, which usually takes a couple of tries for them to answer on the other end. If it's some "charity" pimping for a cause, I'll wait for the robo/real person to get going before going all Karen on them, which either gets them to stop or be put on their do not call list. If it's a woman doing the pimping, I will get extremely inappropriate by asking about their measurements and such, which usually ends the call in less than 15 seconds and gets our number to be put on a do not call list.

If it's for my car warranty, I will wait for the Indian telemarketer with the American name to come on, and start doing my spiel by saying 1} I don't drive, 2} I ride a bike or 3} can you help me acquire a car.

Now one time about two weeks ago, my mother and wife were getting harassed by a DirectTV scammer who would just not go away. So when he called again to complain about us hanging up on him, I went full one night stand/cruisin' mode on the guy (note, I are not bent nor do I care if someone is). I started off by asking how well hung he is, about the maximum size I could take, can he fulfill my needs, etc.

This seemed to throw him for a loop, so I kept dog-piling until I got him to drop an "F" bomb by telling me to do something physically impossible, so I told him that I would need his personal help in completing that pleasant task. Suffice to say, he hasn't called back since.

Trolling on FB has been harder as of late though. I used to get suggested FB pages from vanity-hybrid publishers, so the first thing I'd do is to investigate their web-page, and since it was chock-full of all kinds of expensive scam packages, I would go to town on their FB page asking pointed questions about their business model. They in turn, would either give an ambiguous answer designed to make me go away, or ignore me. More often than not, the end result would be me seeing the page, but otherwise being blocked by them from either commenting or using an emoji.

The best results from my trolling were as follows {all of these are T.L.;DR versions}:

1} Had another vanity publisher get into an argument with me on another vanity publisher's FB page. Thus, I was killing it with two different publishers. Had back-up on my side as well.

2} Had a very nice lady who offered editing and publishing services (offering to actually publish the book for them) follow me over to my wall to continue the argument, and no matter how many times I would explain what they did made them a vanity, they still couldn't get it.

3} A national labor union page. That one lasted about three weeks, with me going into excruciating detail on how bad public sector unions are (disclaimer, former public sector union member for about 8 years, then withdrew shortly after Janus v AFSCME), and others telling me how "good" their private sector union is (personally on the fence about that). Eventually though, I got blocked from that page as well.

My trolling has dropped like the popularity of the current administration, mostly due to FB tweaking their algorithms/businesses tweaking their audience reach. Now I mostly troll potential elected representatives from other states about how incompetent their social media managers are, or businesses/organizations representing/writing about things I disagree with popping up as suggested pages.

I certainly hope you enjoyed this little slice of my personal life and hopefully we can do this again very, very soon.

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved