I already knew that people are nuts, but spending some time in Facebook groups this week has revealed a whole new level of nuts. Maybe it’s The New Nuts. Group members are like piranha, waiting for a newbie to make a comment so they can perform a feeding frenzy.

A few years ago, my sister told me about joining an Opera group on Facebook. According to her, she made an innocent comment, and everyone pounced on her. She was shaken by the experience, because she has an extensive knowledge of opera. I didn’t understand why this happened until now.

Why do FB groups propagate this crazy behavior? Are the people who join groups already crazy? Or does being a group member generate deranged tribal behavior?

I wondered if groups centered on the arts attract irritable snobs. But a friend told me her Laundry Tips group was nuts too. This is kind of exciting, actually, and tempts me to join a million groups, to observe how petty and hostile they are.

I learned this shit the hard way by commenting in a group called “Victorian Images”. I rarely look at it but I did yesterday. There was a sepia photo of a stiff little child standing on a chair, as her mother knelt at her side. Stupidly, I commented that it looked like a postmortem photo. It seemed obvious, in fact, that it was a postmortem photo.

Before I knew it, everyone commented on my ignorance, some angry, some mocking. It was incredible. It was death by a thousand cuts. One person exclaimed that I wouldn’t be “satisfied unless there was a Dead Victorian Baby”. I suggested that they were acting nuts, and conceded that I might have been wrong.

So I posted the image on my own page, and got a unanimous vote that the baby was dead. So I went back to the group and said the baby was totally fucking dead, quoting Monty Python, etc etc.

Now, everyone knows that neighborhood groups are contentious, except for their hatred of the homeless, but I just had no idea about other groups. Why don’t these nutcases take their fury to Twitter, where the action is? Are they pussies, only brave enough to vent in a private FB group?

While I have a deep disregard for trolls, I’ve decided to become one on Facebook. Everyone hates me anyway so why not? At least I can have some fun. I read a thing about losing weight in my Sisters AARP newsletter for Black women. It asked me to list ten things that made me feel good, besides eating. TEN, are they kidding? I could only think of 4. You try it.

Well, now I can add trolling to my list, for a total of five things. Yay, me.

I want to apologize to Leslie Jones for the awfulness of people on the Internet.

When she was abused on Twitter by a bunch of brain-damaged racist trolls led by some cunt from Breitbart, I was truly aghast at the level of cruelty out there.

It reminded me of the time I was the victim of trolling, an experience I will never forget. Being trolled by an organized group is like a spiritual gang rape. You can’t believe people are so crazy. You feel dehumanized for a reason: Trolls don’t think of you as human. You are just prey.

And yet the Leslie Jones trolls are so vile, your heart breaks just to read a sample of their invective. It’s like a gang of malevolent infants throwing their own shit around and reveling in it.

I just read that the Department of Homeland Security will be investigating the hacking of Jones’ website, and you know they’re going to get that fucker (or fuckers.)

But I also just read something less encouraging, in a piece on Vox about defending Leslie Jones with the hashtag #IStandWithLeslie.  The writer discusses the attacks in the context of ‘misogynoir,’ meaning misogyny targeting black women.

I admit I didn’t know this was a thing, that’s how ignorant/sheltered/politically unaware I am. And the Vox piece tells me that hashtag activism…

needs to be connected to the multiple ways black women are systemically targeted and exploited offline, and redress those problems accordingly.

Okay. Or so I thought.

Evidently Katy Perry rushed to Jones’ defense on Twitter, even denouncing “misogynoir crime.” Good for Katy, right?

No. Wrong.

The Vox writer scolds Katy Perry for her cultural appropriation.

Even though Perry signal-boosted misogynoir, she in her music video for the 2014 single “This is How We Do” can be seen sporting cornrows, baby hairs gelled down, looking at the camera while deploying slang rooted in black culture like “I see you” with a pursed lip.

Perry — like Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift — is one of the many celebrities who have created their own cultural cool co-opting the fashion (and sometimes the actual bodies) of women of color as props to give them an edge. And while Perry, as a white woman, is praised, the injustice comes from the fact that the women of color she emulates, like Jones, are punished for doing the same thing.

Here I will stop and lament that we have come to this.

I want to apologize to Leslie Jones EVEN THOUGH I’M WHITE! I genuinely deplore the abuse she has suffered and I worry about her well-being. I look up to her and I feel for her, even though I listen to soul music and own a necklace that says THUG in rhinestones.

Black culture is not sacrosanct in my house and neither is any other culture including my husband’s Mexican one and my Jewish one. We are elevated and enhanced by appreciating cultures outside our own upbringing.

I love you Leslie Jones, whether that Vox writer likes it or not. I hope you will accept my sincere apology on behalf of the human race.

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In response to my last post about rock bands, I  received  the following comment by someone using the name Gene Simmons:

i hate that old dried up cunt, the one who ´s son died

~

Here are my thoughts. It’s wrong to attack someone like this, online or otherwise. Why the hell would a total stranger try to hurt me in this way?? Just because they could get away with it?   It is beyond my understanding.

So I wrote back to this person, and said:

What a horrible thing to write to me!    May I ask what moves you to write such a hateful comment to someone you have never met?   I hope you never experience the loss of a child.    Meanwhile, I’d like to know why you would invoke the loss of mine in response to an  innocuous  blog post about rock bands?    Sister Wolf

The next day, she replied:

you know what you are right
I ´m deeply sorry
your loss is way too big for me to understand, and i was outta line
this is what made me write that:
“that girl whose boyfriend punched her in the face”
when a person suffers through abuse, besides the beatings and insults and humiliation
what hurts the most is  the scorn of those around her,
things like
“that would never happen to me”
“that happens only to stupid bitches”
and it pissed me off that while you demand compassion about your situation,
you show none towards  someone who was fucking publicly punched in the face and then mocked endlessly for it
sometimes the only person who doesn ´t shit on you for being in that situation
(that looks so simple but it ´s not)
is  your abuser
so you go back  because in that moment he is being sweet, when deep down you know that it won ´t last
and it was a mistake I ´m sorry
I know things don ´t get better by insulting someone else in pain
and there i was trying to put you down to make myself feel better
when we are all fighting something
that random comment just struck a cord, felt personal you know?
óbviously I ´m not without fault myself
I hope this makes you feel less insulted

yours truly
Gene Simmons

~

Having read and reread this explanation, I don’t feel Gene Simmons knows the difference between a pop star and a blogger who lost a child.   I don’t “demand compassion” as Gene Simmons states. I have no demands. I merely expect human decency from those who wish to leave comments.

Gene Simmons is actually a 31 year old aspiring artist named Gabriela who lives in Mexico. There she is, above. She needs to take  responsibility for the things she writes.   She’s not 12 years old, after all.

I don’t want to hear ONE MORE WORD about my vag, which in fact does not suffer from dryness. And I don’t want to be taunted with the death of my child.

Please explain to Gabriela why her apology is worthless, since I don’t feel adequate to the task. Explain to her that the cause of abused women  isn’t  furthered by grotesque insults lobbed at other women, under cover of a pseudonym.

And if you want more of Gabriela in your life, you can visit her here.

Remember an avid troll commenter called Monique, who returned again and again to let me know what a stupid and pathetic untalented jealous loser I am? Remember when   she passed on a message from her friend Gretchen that “my cunt is full of sand?”

Well, now it is my privilege to introduce the camera shy Monique R, pictured above sharing a toast with her friends Sea, Platinum-Hair Girl and a young man named Fred who favors wacky hats.

When she isn’t flaming bloggers who make fun of Sea, Monique likes to take photos and hang out at bars to watch guys dancing in their underwear.   She protects her tweets, perhaps because she knows that people could come along and join a malicious hatemail campaign against her, AT ANY MOMENT!

Look how happy Monique is, dining with her idol, rubbing elbows with the social gentry, perhaps comparing funny hats with that guy Fred.   What made Monique go all rabid and ballistic when I teased Sea? Why was Monique so relentless and below the belt?

People are so fucking weird. They are truly unfathomable. I am learning this every day. Some of them need to be kept safely at a distance. Some will come at you only when they smell blood. The new Gentler Sister Wolf does not advocate any nasty comments designed to upset Monique. Instead, maybe we can help her explore her fanatical fealty to Sea, or her delusion that she “knows” me from looking back through the archives here.

I know you are an aspirational type, Monique. Screeching online about a strangers vag is not the way to social success, unless Dallas is much weirder than I imagined.

But I forgive you. You’re just out of your element.