Sometimes you discover things about yourself in the most ordinary conversations.

While updating bestie Sarah (by text, since she moved away 😭) on my progress with two new cat-sitting clients/fur-kin, I noted that though they were still wary of this new person in their house, they were perhaps “starting to understand I’m just an overgrown cat.” (As I sit here now, Zoey has been cautiously observing me. Churchill, on the other hand, started giving me head bonks within a couple of days. I’m their first sitter ever, so they’re not used to new people, and the connection isn’t always instant.)

Sarah agreed that I am indeed an overgrown cat (minus the grooming myself with my tongue; ew). That led me to realize that my somewhat perverse joy in triggering trolls is probably related to how a cat likes to play with its prey (I don’t usually get zoomies, though, because I’m old, fat and tired). Friend, colleague and fellow member of the Capricorn Cabal (a few of us remain at the Democrat-Gazette, though some have left for other opportunities) John Deering went a step further, saying I was “knocking things off the trolls’ proverbial shelves, so to speak.”

Point made.

What can I say? It amuses me to, in a small way, troll the trolls. I’m no Greta Thunberg (her past trolling of Donald Trump is something to aspire to, and she did it mostly by staying out of the gutter he likes to drag everyone into), but knowing what triggers certain trolls, and knowing they can’t help but respond while I ignore them … well, it cracks me up a bit.

Longtime readers know I’m no fan of Internet trolls. And again, since the ones on the newspaper’s comment boards like to say that I believe trolls to be anyone with whom I disagree, here’s the actual definition (not that they’ll pay attention): “someone who deliberately posts inflammatory or otherwise disruptive content with the intent to provoke emotional reactions, derail civil conversation and create chaos.”

The trolls on the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette site have made up numerous stories about me, other columnists (especially female columnists, though they also have issues with ones like John Brummett and Philip Martin), other commenters, and basically anyone who just irks them, especially if that anyone happens to be female, anything left of hard right (while there are left-leaning trollish persons there, it’s mostly MAGA/Trump-thumper territory), a person of color and/or a member of the LGBTQIA+ community.

I’ve been called pathetic, “the ultimate Karen,” “poster girl of the Democrats” (they refuse to believe I belong to no party and never have, and that my politics, like most people’s, vary according to topic), and so many other things. They attribute things to me that I have never said, take things I have said out of context, and generally spew their fever-dream version of me on the boards. I wouldn’t want to be the person they pretend I am; for one thing, that Brenda is an unbearable person who spends all her time monitoring the comment board as a moderator (which I have never done and don’t have time to do, nor would I want to; I would think having to read all the comments would contribute to being unbearable).

So permit me, if you please, to play with my food every once in a while (but seriously, I’m not eating trolls; who knows where they’ve been?). If nothing else, it reminds them that others are allowed different opinions than theirs.

Shocking, I know. People in Arkansas and anywhere else in the United States are allowed to opine contrarily to the loudest voices (which, despite their volume, aren’t always the majority anyway). The First Amendment makes that possible, and is available to anyone here, whether citizen or not.

I know it irritates some when I talk of my fur-kin, with at least one very sad personage believing it has something to do with bestiality (!!! dude needs help), but for many of us, pets aren’t just animals, but family members. When my furry boy Luke was alive, my mom called him her grandkitty, the only green-eyed grandchild she ever got (Mama had green eyes; I have flecks of green in my eyes, but we all got brown eyes). Most of my cat-sitting clients have become like family to me, so I’m Aunt Brenda (or Benda) to my fur-nieces and nephews, and I am honored by their head-bonks, kisses and cuddles. My friends’ pets, like Spike and Gouda (cats in dogs’ bodies), are likewise my fur-kin, and I love them dearly even though I’m just dog-adjacent (I don’t quite know how to deal with dogs, but cats are no mystery to me; a French kiss from a canine is not what I signed up for, but I will give them all the skritches and love they want, and in the case of Spikezilla, let him cuddle under the covers with me because he’s the goodest boy).

We’re no longer the agrarian society we used to be, where animals were treated almost exclusively as property, but are now integrating our pets and even our working animals more thoroughly into our everyday lives (back when I was in school, a dairy farmer friend kept scrapbooks of his cows; he has always been one of the kindest people I’ve ever known). Some people have cats instead of children (because who wants to bring children into this world now), and they worry about them because they love them. When our pets pass on, it hurts like we’ve lost a family member, so why should we not treat them as family? The night Luke died, a man was leaving his dog at the emergency vet to be put down, and when they asked if he wanted to stay, he said he couldn’t handle it. No matter how broken I was, I couldn’t not be there for Luke, who had been with me for nearly 14 years. I wanted to make sure he knew he was loved to the very end, and that he would always be my family.

It irritates others when I speak of marginalized communities, such as women, people of color, and the LGBTQIA+ community, but we have to remember that only white male landowners never really had to fight for their rights here, and it wasn’t long before non-landowning white males got the same rights. Others, meanwhile, fought for long decades to get those rights, only to now have them threatened once more (if you don’t think they are, consider the ramifications of the SAVE America Act the president is trying to get passed, which could endanger voting for transgender people, married women, and those without the money to get a passport or a certified birth certificate). While you might be of the mind that people not like you don’t deserve those rights, they fought for and won them, and rolling back their rights will ultimately affect you as well somewhere down the line. And again, rights aren’t pie: There are plenty to go around, so you don’t have to worry that you’ll get less because someone else gained rights.

And hey, you can keep up the “I’m not a biologist” trope all you want when it comes to intersex and trans individuals, but actual biologists know better than you that not all is black and white when it comes to gender; there are more chromosonal variations out there than just XX and XY that can lead to something like Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome that has a female-presenting person born with XY chromosomes. (Jackie Green, who is intersex with CAIS, is a great person to follow for laymen’s information on the gender spectrum. Her body doesn’t react to testosterone, which we all have in varying amounts, so despite her XY chromosomes, she developed and lives as a woman, but she wasn’t born with a uterus so is infertile.)

And of course, there are those who are bothered by my flogging the importance of newspapers and fact-checking. Some seem to believe that there’s no fact-checking on the opinion pages at the paper, but they’d be wrong, and letters and columns of all political stripes get tossed or revised because of it, just as the news side ensures to the best of its abilities that what it prints is fact, and if something is materially, factually wrong, it’s corrected as soon as is practicable. And without newspapers and other trusted local media around, there would be no one to hold the powerful to account when they betray their oaths to the public.

News deserts are bad for everyone (well, except for the corrupt), especially when corruption runs rampant.

Just because you don’t agree with something that’s been reported doesn’t mean it isn’t factual. There aren’t different realities for people of different political/religious/cultural beliefs, no matter how many people try to create that with glowing reviews for their people and scathing rants for others.

Just because you don’t agree with someone’s opinion is no reason to denigrate them or to make claims without proof (one more time: the burden of proof is on the person making the claim, so stop telling people you’re not going to do the work for them; always bring the receipts … and please don’t do what someone defending a Threads troll has done, by saying they’ve verified the documentation, but can’t provide it because that would be illegal … huh???).

Just because you might have had to struggle doesn’t mean others haven’t struggled more and aren’t afraid now of what will happen to their rights and, eventually, yours. I’m a woman who has lived on the edge of poverty for the bulk of my life (especially since there’s no one else to contribute to my bills), yet I still have privilege because I’m white. Recognizing your own privilege is key to empathy.

We’re in this together. That’s why occasionally someone has to bat around a troll or two to remind them.