Usually, I make it my policy not to correct people on Facebook, though there are many people who are frankly wrong out there. Except for the occasional stray bit of punctuation, and spelling “a lot” as a single word, I make it my policy to let things slide.  Though many people want to make the world a better place through linking, I believe sites like Facebook should have fun as their goal.

But now and then someone pushes one of my buttons making it very hard to look the other way.

A few weeks ago, someone I know liked a post about the stand off in Oregon between the local sheriff and Ammon Bundy’s followers who were holed up in the visitor center of a national wildlife refuge.  The post was about how some people had taken to writing fan fiction satires featuring romantic plot lines between the men in Bundy’s gang.  I never read any of them, but with the hashtag #BundyEroticFanFic we all get the idea.

So I left a comment calling out the underlying anti-gay bigotry in this sort of thing.  It bugs me when gay people are expected to laugh along with our hipster friends about “those bigots who are all probably gay anyway.”  No one ever implies that someone they admire is in the closet about being gay.  (Oh, those wonderful young men who rescued all those people from that burning church, you just know they’re going to grow up to be gay after they’ve done something so brave.)  I tried to funny about it, wondering why the authors didn’t also make the Bundy Bunch Jewish or trans-sexual, too.

The original poster, who found #BundyEroticFanFic funny, didn’t see the humor in my comment.  He replied back that I was missing the point, that #BundyEroticFanFic’s weren’t homophobic since they were satire, that the Bundy Bunch were probably homophobic anyway so it was fair to call them gay, that you can’t really explain humor, that if you can’t make fun of things like this, then there is no comedy, etc.

Normally, I would have stopped there, but I replied again.  I pretended to understand his comments and to agree with them.  But why not make the Bundy bunch secretly Jewish, too, since they were just as likely to be anti-semetic as they were to be anti-gay.  Why not have them secretly reading the Torah.  And if they are anti-gay they are almost certainly anti-trans, so why not show them cross-dressing or something like that.  Maybe when they look for snacks after having an intimate moment, they could put on women’s robes and complain that they had run out of the good lox.  Wouldn’t that be funny?

While I was having fun, I knew that I was deliberately goading the original poster on, hoping to get a rise in response.  It was kind of exciting.  He did  reply, but I didn’t read it.  I knew I was becoming a troll; I knew I had to stop.  The only way to avoid trolldom was to give someone else the last word, so that’s what I did.

But the temptation was great.  I could really understand why so many people become internet trolls.  It was fun.

Now I’m back to my more typical policy of only correcting grammar mistakes on Facebook once in a great while.  This may not make the world a better place, but it will help with my tiny corner of social media.  People should be nice; people should have correct grammar.

In other news…..

We have this week off! Hurrah!  No real plans for the week, perhaps a trip to Coppola Winery since we have a gift card.  Some work around the house, maybe finally get the doors on the time machine we’re building in the back yard, make a few things in my studio downstairs, read a bunch of books from my TBR shelves.

The dogs do need a bath, so there’s that.  The taxes forms are all in so there’s that to be done, too.  And we need to trim the rose bushes.

But we’re basically footloose and fancy free for the next seven days.

I have three reviews to type up:  a kids book on Noah Webster, a Simenon crime story not about Inspector Maigret and a wonderful little novella by Flauberd called  A Simple Heart.

So, a perfect vacation.