How to be Called a C*NT on Nextdoor.com, Part 2: Winning

[This is part II of a two-part series where I relay my experiences from this past Halloween. After posting a silly, yet mildly offensive, comment on Nextdoor.com where I sought advice on how to get rid of little children, I was lambasted with insults from two unstable male Nextdoor.com users. Mark had called me a “pathetic bitch” because I did not buy candy for the children. Daniel had called me a “FUCKING CUNT” for the same reason. Here is the second part of the story involving these two “characters.”]

Mark must have psychically known that I was still reeling from Daniel’s calling me a “FUCKING CUNT,” because he took the opportunity to piggy-back on Daniel’s “think of the poor kids, you bitch” theme. Like a left-hook out of nowhere, while I was already recovering from being kicked in the stomach by Daniel, Mark posted again. And this time, he was determined not only to call me out, but to also assemble an army of Nextdoor users who would shame me to the point where I would go crawling on my bloodied knees back into the dog house where I belonged.

Mark practically screamed, “this is NO joke! Everyone on this thread, she is SERIOUS! She bought NO candy! Read her original post! She bought no candy! This bitch is SERIOUS. You should all be OUTRAGED. Your apathy towards the kids walking around freezing tonight is SHOCKING. Selfish ASSHOLE!! I hope your neighbors HATE YOU.”

Now, I was legitimately starting to get uncomfortable. And on top of that, his anger combined with the fact that he was right – I bought no candy – pierced the normal invincible armor I make sure to don when surfing around on Nextdoor. I was starting to feel a little guilty. Like a bit of a dick. This had never really happened before. See, I am no stranger to being unpopular on Nextdoor. I have on many occasions conducted sneaky little experiments on there designed to test how much bullshit my neighbors will buy into. Consequently, I have offended a user or two before. And I’ve gotten a few slaps on the wrist from Nextdoor admins in the past, but it’s always been so worth. The laughter and joy my posts usually elicit from my neighbors usually far outweigh any negative press I might get.

Tonight was different. As of yet, no one had come to my defense to shut down Daniel and Mark. And I had allowed myself to become insecure and defensive. I immediately turned to my husband and sought his counsel. “WTF. What do I do? Do I take my post down?? I really don’t want to! It’s funny. Plus, these guys are crazy! I need to shut this down somehow! What do you think?” My husband, who I had been giving the play-by-play, just shook his head and advised, “well, sweetie. You’ve pressed a hot button issue. You have to expect that you’ll get this kind of response. It’s a controversial subject,” he said in his sage-like way. Now, usually my husband’s advice is excellent. But, tonight not so much. Tonight, apparently everyone, including my husband, had tripped and fallen into a warp hole where Halloween is considered a holy, sacred event – kind of like the second coming of Christ. And I had basically flung poo onto the face of Jesus just as he was reincarnating onto the planet. I couldn’t contain myself.

“Are you high?! Abortion is a hot-button issue! If I posted on Nextdoor something along the lines of ‘Just got a great abortion at Sam’s Abortion Clinic, I highly recommend! Thank god for that vacuum!’ then maybe I can see eliciting this degree of rage. But this is HALLOWEEN. Not abortion! If I had set up a lights display culminating in a string of reindeer humping the baby Jesus, I could see people lashing out like this! But this is fucking Halloween! And candy! This is about kids and their entitlement to free candy! Not what I would consider a hot button subject. What the fuck?”

My husband quickly snapped back to reality and conceded. This was, indeed, ridiculous. But, it was too late for me. The shame had crept in and I was feeling like a grade A dickbag for not handing out candy. I felt totally backed into a corner. I am not proud of what I said next, but I had no choice. I lied.

“Mark and Daniel, you two really need to relax. Not only was this post a joke, but I also have been handing out candy steadily for the last three hours. I hope this sets both of your minds at ease and I hope you realize how inappropriate and insane you both have been this evening. Relax.”

After lying, I sprinted upstairs from the basement and flicked on the front porch light. Nextdoor publishes a person’s address and I could see one of those two freaks, if not both, jumping in their cars to check and see if my lights were indeed off as I had said in my original post. Mark, especially, was hell bent on trying to catch me not giving out candy. And my lie did little to dislodge the family of porcupines that shot like a rocket into his asshole as soon as he read my original post. He continued.

“NO! You are lying! Everyone read her original post! The only thing funny was that part about the urine spray. EVERYTHING else was factual. She stated the facts! She did not hand out candy!!!! NO ONE should believe this shit!”

Daniel jumped back on me, too. But his next rant slightly diverged from Mark’s.

“The urine spray was NOT funny!!!!! She compared kids to urine spray!!!! (which, for the record, is not true, I said that any possible child repellent would compare to urine spray). KIDS are children! They are not URINE SPRAY!!!!”

I was really impressed by Daniel’s latest reply. Huh. Kids are children, Daniel. Thank you for clarifying that for me. I thought they were just adults with low growth hormone levels. And I’m really glad that you dispelled my former belief in the idea that children are the same thing as the contents of an aerosol can. I was working with two geniuses over here. While I was formulating my response, finally, finally, a Nextdoor kindred came to my rescue. It was clear that she possessed the same superpowers that I did and that she didn’t have to pass through the asshole portal to log on. She admonished the men.

“These posts are vile. I cannot believe the language on here. I am disgusted. It is VERY possible for someone to forget Halloween. And not everyone needs or likes kids and that’s FINE. You two should be ashamed of yourselves.”

Thank you Lynn. Thank you so much Lynn. I suddenly felt myself floating back into the world of normalcy where people had a bit more perspective. Shortly thereafter, a number of other users followed suit. Nancy defended me and condemned Daniel’s despicable language. Claire pointed out how inappropriate Mark was being by trying to rage a campaign against me for not buying candy. These ladies soothed the bumps and bruises I had accumulated from being called an “asshole” and “FUCKING CUNT” so many times in such a brief period of time.

Then, the next thing I knew, Daniel’s “FUCKING CUNT” comment magically disappeared from the thread. “Uh-oh for you naughty Daniel!” I thought with great happiness. “YOU have been reported and your content was removed because it was so bad! YES! Hahahaha! And it wasn’t by me!” This might have been the only time I’ve appreciated the reporting feature on Nextdoor.com. And the good news just kept rolling in. Moments later, I received a private message from Erin – a Nextdoor administrator. Erin’s email was titled “I enjoyed it you clever girl,” and, in the body of her message, she told me how she had removed Daniel’s comment and to let her know if he bothered me via the message feature. She would intervene and get the big dogs of Nextdoor involved to make it stop, she assured me.

I was a little worried and braced myself from a nasty email from Daniel. But, then something unforeseen happened. Daniel had been beaten into submission. With his tail between his legs, he reluctantly made one last public appearance on my post.

“I want to apologize to all of my neighbors and to you Julie for my terrible comments. I have had a really long and hard day and need to stop bringing work home with me. I am very sorry and I regret what I said.”

Well, that was kind of nice I thought. I am a sucker for an apology, so my heart melted a little to see him be so genuinely contrite. But, it was not lost on me that it’s pretty weird that a long and hard day can be a catalyst for calling someone a “FUCKING CUNT” in a very public social media forum. While Daniel was winning back some points with me, he definitely was still a lunatic.

Next thing I knew, I received a private email from Daniel entitled simply “OMG.” Apparently, he felt the need to apologize to me personally. He explained that he worked with disabled kids and how his temper flared because his clients were looking forward to Halloween. He continued on about how his boss had been angry with him for some time and what a hard time he was having at his job. He repeated his difficulty with leaving work at work and not being wound up at home. Hair-trigger, I believe was the word he used to describe his impressive temper. Now, I couldn’t not respond to this.

I needed a very carefully calculated response and that is just what I created. My response was designed to build connection with Daniel, play to his sympathies, and, most importantly, make him feel like a massive chode for calling me such bad names. I was as gracious, kind, human, generous, mature, and sweet as I could be. But, because I am a bit of a dick myself, I wanted him to suffer the guilt he deserved to suffer for verbally assaulting me.

“Daniel, absolutely no hard feelings. I have had really hard days, too. And I do get it. Your job sounds pretty stressful and it also sounds like you have a lot of passion for what you do. I worked at a domestic violence shelter for many, many years and I got protective of the women we sheltered, also. So I do understand what was behind your post. And I am genuinely sorry for the fact that I wasn’t more clear. I feel really bad that I upset you. I am sure you are a great person and I respect both your passion for what you do and the fact that you reached out. Thank you so much for doing so.”

“He has to feel like such a douche right about now,” I thought. That’s right you jackass. You just beat up on a sweet, big-hearted, champion of the downtrodden. Nice going. You should probably doubt your sanity and feel the degree of shame you might feel as if you were caught jacking off in a public movie theatre.

“Well, I am quite pleased with how this turned out,” I silently concluded. Daniel and I have made peace and I can now move on from this post. But, I was concluding too soon. As it turns out, I still had Mark to contend with.

“You didn’t buy any candy you bitch,” Mark said as he slithered onto my private email page. Ugh. This guy was too much. Mark was legitimately frightening me at this point, so I was done with the shenanigans. Therefore, I took my response to him seriously.

“Never contact me again. You are an unstable human being and I am very uncomfortable with your messaging me. Thank you.” I typed back.

Short and sweet and to the point. How could anyone actually continue emailing in response to that? I was pretty sure he would go radio silent. But Mark didn’t back down. Instead, he took a turn for the extremely absurd. He sent four short messages in succession. The first two messages arrived in my inbox back to back. But, he waited about five minutes between messages two and three. And about ten minutes before messages three and four. Clearly, he was trying to goad me into fighting with him over email, but that wouldn’t be working. I stuck to my guns and just watched the emails roll in and, as they did, the emails became progressively more preposterous.

Mark’s immediate reply to my polite request that he go the fuck away was pretty funny “Are you a shrink. I am uncomfortable with you being a neighbor!” Okay, Mr. 8 year-old. What was he going to say next? “I’m rubber and you’re glue and whatever you say about me bounces back and sticks onto you!” Moron.

But then Mark stepped it up a notch. He was going to give me a little lesson in tort law. “Calling someone unstable is slander and defamation.” Now, this was one of my favorites of his four messages. For so many reasons I loved this response, not the least of which was the fact that I am actually a lawyer who is quite aware of what slander and defamation mean. And our little private email exchange amounted to slander kind of like how a pile of bunny rabbits amounts to a donkey.

Next, he made my favorite comment of his four comments. His third comment was actually accurate, but not for the reasons he thought it was. “Lawyers love this stuff,” he said. He was attempting to subtly threaten me with a lawsuit. This was when he cemented his status as absolute moron in my opinion. But, to Mark’s credit, he was right. Lawyers do love taking money from people who have hopeless cases so that said lawyers can rack up huge attorneys fees and laugh their asses off at their dumbass clients.

Finally, Mark said “Too late. I screen-shot it and I’m calling one tomorrow.” Ahhhh. Yes, the lawyer/lawsuit threat was complete. I still didn’t respond – at least not to him. I did tell a number of my lawyer friends and we got quite a kick out of his lawsuit plans. It was so hard not to respond. I really wanted to. But, I dug deep into my rarely used restraint reserves and stayed silent.

I guess after getting no reaction from me after his four messages, Mark gave up. It was late at this point and I was tired. My original “child repellent” post was slowing down. Now, most everyone replying to it was supportive and telling me what a kick they got out of it. And this made me happy.

In the end, according to my calculations, I did garner far more favorable responses than insane ones. So, I was satisfied with my Nextdoor mischief for the night. I have not heard a peep out of Mark and Daniel since Halloween. I was actually scared enough to pay $28 to run a criminal background check on that Mark, though. Two arrests for assault and one for destruction of private property. Wow. That was not really all that surprising. Clearly, he was a bit off his rocker. I slept with my pepper spray next to my bed that night, fully expecting our house to be egged by morning. But, so far, everything has been status quo. Thankfully, I survived that bizarre and over-the-top Halloween rigmarole on Nextdoor.com. Of course, I had started it, so I was not entirely innocent – which is usually the way many things go in my life. But, hopefully, I came out smelling a bit rosier than those other two weirdos. I’m quite confident I did. And I’ll probably use this rosiness as inspiration for my next adventure on Nextdoor.com.