There's More Than One Way To Skin A Troll

What started out as an enjoyable evening on Twitter, and an innocent exchange, because we were drinking, spiraled into a trollish attack when our Sucide Prevention Month post, written by our guest blogger and friend @KerryStott, hit the "Twitter waves" (Timeline).

As per Twitter, read from the bottom up on the following screen shots...which are completely fragmented...ironically.

You'll have to skip to the bottom of this lower image to start
where the other left off, a la Twitter Style.

A fairly new male follower decided he didn't like the post, (or rather the post that Kerry primarily wrote) saying it "glamorized" suicide. We (last night, Catherine) asked him to explain why he thought this (don't think that screen shot of her request made it into the bunch)...he did not...instead he started attacking us about our age, and it spiraled. I'll admit, some of our younger alters are not equipped to handle attacks on Twitter, whereas Frank would have given the bastard a verbal beating, (and did, eventually) and others would have handled it much differently.

One of those screen shot is how Sam dealt with it. He's our protector of the younger. He's only 16, but he's an angry angry boy.

Then Frankie stepped in. It was really a bad night, not helped at all by the drinking that had gone on while we were on Twitter. (the only way we can sleep through the night, and not wake up every hour, is by drinking these days)

It really spiraled from there, and then Frankie maintained control and the incident was mostly put out of our mind; until morning, when a fellow friend, fellow DID "sufferer" sent us an @ saying he had just performed his very first block. Our response to this was poorly constructed and the "troll" got angry, because he picked up on it.

In the end we chose to ignore him after the following messages:

You know what, some of us just don't have the capacity to give a fuck, yet others are sensitive (they are younger).

We understand some people might view us as "bat shit crazy"...we also understand, and KNOW, that some people think us more sane than the half of society that judges people based on things like their levels of mental health.

This troll, who hadn't bothered to read our blog, not even the top banner that says who we are, just for a little understanding, felt confident enough to say the things he did to us (all the while admitting he had only skimmed it before "attacking" us about it), and then eventually told us we were "self-important" (because of his misunderstanding as to why we use "we" and "us" in our Tweets), as well as calling us a cunt, and a fat ass (which, by the way, we are not...a fat ass, that is. We're a size 8/10, with a proportionate ass.)

One of our followers, who he had addressed separately, who came to our defense. We thank you.

This stuck with us, him calling us "self important". All day as we went about some of our work tasks, pipping butter rosettes...and, well, we had some switching today and the only thing I can remember is us being very angry and shoving a lot of stuff, and scowling a lot...and me...thinking thoughts about our sous chef that would get us in trouble with the boyfriend. (Sorry, honey...I'm "lonely"...)

We'll get back to more about the "self important" stuff, meanwhile...trolls are all over the internet, and in social media they reign. Here is a little screen shot of an article we read tonight, which we thought applicable....

Screenshot of a NYTimes article, if you click it then it will take you to the article in it's entirety.

Having read that, some of our trolls do not seem so bad in comparison...though it depends which of us they are dealing with; we did have a mean one a few months back whose comment on a painting we wrote completely threw some of us into a tailspin (read: sobbing and calling Fabulous People...it was a very bad time of year for us). It currently lives in the comments section of this post http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/2011/03/saviour-painting.html#comments)

In our time on Twitter, for US it's been about 9 months, us being us, obviously we have encountered many people who some might consider Trolls, for a variety of reasons (and actually, the guy who we talked about at the beginning of this post, we didn't even consider him a troll until one of our followers told us to stop paying attention to that "troll")...we usually have been able to talk to them rationally, and then they become devout followers...and friends.

Not this time.

Bottom line, if you are on the internet and blogging about, or have a social media account that you also use to deal with something you are passionate about, you will incite the evil trolls...(we try to remind some of US of that all the time).

The thing is, there are so many wonderful people who aren't trolls, but all it takes is one nasty fucker to spoil a night, or a day at work.

So...

How to deal with a Troll

Not feeding the troll is a problem for some of us, because we've had positive results...that's one of our optimistic dears at work for you...but ultimately, what we tell the rest of us, and you...don't respond. We stopped responding today when the comments elevated to become extremely rude and harassing...and he went away...hopefully for good.

Kill them with Kindness -

We'll admit, this is one (as well as the next two) of the tips we found online...there are only tips given to businesses...people seeimlingly forget that every day people/writers/those in the public eye, can be subject to this bullying. (A troll is a bully)

We're guessing being kind to a troll is akin to waving and smiling to that guy who just gave you the finger on the interstate.

Reach out for support -

We do this by RTing, sometimes. If one of us feels they can't handle the situation they RT the harassment in hopes someone comes to the rescue, but other times it's to show what a complete cunt the person is. And if it happens in the blog, we blog about it, it's therapeutic...more people read our blog than most would guess, but sadly never enough for our advocacy goal.

We've had people who know us from real life turn into trolls, and have support from followers on Twitter, and friends on Facebook, and blog readers, who have been inspired through our blog come to our defense. Reach out, to wherever you have to when you need help with a troll.

Listen -

Yeah,we got this tip from business related troll literature...listen but also take with a grain of salt...this is how we listened...

He said we are "Self important".

No, but we are not self important.

We're important.

Conceited to say? No.

All we have to know about us, to know that overall we are important, is the countless DM messages sent to us...

[paraphrased, but accurate]

"Thank you. My mom suffers from DID and you've given me understanding on what she goes through"

"Thank you, your suicide blog entry was just what I needed. My family member is in the hospital right now because of suicide"

"You help me pull through my day"

"You have inspired me to write"

...and the list goes on.

Last weekend we were up till well into 2am DMing (Direct Messaging) with a couple of people, one who had placed themselves on self-suicide watch, asking us questions about mental illness (we directed them to see a professional, but we're willing to listen), and a young woman who we scrolled across in the Timeline who clearly needed someone to listen to her. We (the one we were that night, honestly, I never would have done it) extended a hand to them, offering our e-mail address if they ever needed to talk.

Self important. No. But guess what. People who read our blog, our FRIENDS and followers, and people on Twitter who know about us, and feel safe to contact us, because they know we won't judge when it comes to the deep issues (even though are tweets, sometimes, can be a bit cunty bitchy). And though sometimes we struggle with own survival...knowing that we can help someone for a day, an hour, any amount of time, makes us feel like we are important...to others. But never to ourselves.

At the end of the day, when faced with a troll, look at the people who matter,the people who you influence and touch with what you say or do, not the troll and his worshipers, for they are a sad bunch who are angry, and disappointed, by something in thier life, and it's not you.

This post was written for our wonderful followers, and some of us...some of us who have not had a lot of experience first hand with people like those we have experienced since writing and putting our life in the "public eye". Those of us who are older have been trying to guide them, the younger ones, but as anyone knows...guiding the young, trying to teach them how to act and feel...will get you nowhere, and they have to find out for themseleves.

*Notes to trolls, specifically our recent one...if you're gonna be a douche, you might not want to a) have the location of your Tweets publicity known OR b) provide Twitpics of your face.

As our troll was trolling last night, our protective boyfriend, who could see the distress in Catherine's face, was locating said troll a mere hour and a half away from his own location in the UK.

Meanwhile, on Twitter, you never know who you are dealing with. We are comfortable in the fact that any one of our followers could actually be a murderer, a psychopath, completely fucking insane...There are reasons that people are pushed to that edge.

Be a social media troll, we dare you.

P.S. We WE'RE gonna hide our "special friends" identity,,,but I decided...fuck it, it's too much work.
~Emmie (see, I can write about more than just sex)

We Get Fired From Our Job

So, as many of you know, and many of you don’t, yesterday we got fired.

Why?

Well, there reasons in our opinion that is clear and those not so clear.  The termination paperwork cited “performance and behaviour problems” as the issue for , we have reason to believe, however, given something said during the “exit interview” that there may be more at hand

We can’t go into too much detail about how much bullshit that is, considering until up to about a month and a half ago we had no job description for our position, therefore no guideline outlining performance requirements for the jobs that were created for us, and there was one large portion of it that they had never given us the guidelines for, despite our asking for specific requirements to fulfill the duties.

According to this paperwork this had been an issue for “many months”, which was news to us because last week Important Boss had informed us that we had been doing a great job. When we brought this up to them during the firing the woman from HR said “we also found your Twitter account” and mentioned (without actually specifying a date, time or what was said) a comment made about a patron that wasn’t very nice.

This put up flags in our head for the following reasons:

·         Our Twitter account is private, our name is not attached, nor is it attached to an e-mail address that people who “know us” in real life are aware of.

·         In 160 characters of a Twitter bio, specifically ours, there is no way to determine destination/identity – we could literally be anyone, anywhere in the world.

·         The Twitter account is linked to this blog where we detail an entire life of mental illness and how we struggle with it day-to-day.

In short, however they cut it, it looks to us, and others, like they discovered this account,  somehow connected it to us, and decided that they didn’t want someone with our particular mental disabilities working for them.

This decree did not come from the staff level; it came from a board of directors, the only people not privy to our mental illness. The entire staff we worked with on a day to day basis has knowledge of our disabilities.  Though likely it’s a staff member who turned their attention to this blog.

If we wanted to raise the issue we could bring up sexual harassment, and manipulation of a known mentally ill person by their manager; issues that can have an impact on “performance and behaviour” in the work place. if you look up sexual harassment information those are key words used to describe why any sort of harassment in the workplace is unhealthy and can effect employee work performance.

Either way, there are further circumstances surrounding this termination that we cannot discuss at the moment, things such as sponsorship paperwork they were willing to sign less than two months ago, and other issues like lack of lunch breaks of any sort during shifts.

Just wait until people find out what this “business” does, which someday will be disclosed since we all had the smarts not to sign one bit of a confidentially agreement at any time.

Important Boss took us aside after the Human Resources staff was done with us and apologized, telling us he tried to prevent it from happening, that he enjoyed working with us and that we HAD been showing improvement, but the board had felt it too late, and so went ahead with the termination. We believed him, every word, because we could see the pain and disappointment in his eyes and we stood in the office, heaving and crying, our eyes darting around in a panic regarding the state of our future. The poor young man had us as the first person he had ever had to fire.

So, after we were fired, mid-shift and sent home we walked around, drank and became of zombie in the heat of the city...we're still fragile about the situation, but we tend to "heal" fast from most things...this time it's just more of a struggle as we are confused and concerned about our future.

For those of you who have been trying to show us a silver lining by saying we can collect benefits of some sort…thank you, however, we are not eligible for any unemployment, social security, or any other benefits, except, ironically…the food shelf/food bank services of the city, for reasons we are not eligible are those that we are not comfortable sharing in this blog just yet. Our only option is to find some sort of work, however much we can as fast as possible before rent is due again.

This week, in two and a half days actually, we have a guest coming (a Twittercrush!) to stay with us for a few weeks. We have already asked for his help in getting us to sit down and work on art grants for writing and painting, as well as work on query letters to send to literary agents. We have years left to write about, and the last year a half of our life could be contained in a book by itself.

When we talked to The Father last night he told us to check ourselves into a hospital. We refused.

“We just need to be strong, dad”

“You are strong, honey” he said to us.

He told us that yesterday our name went out in the prayer chain at his church, and said he is as confused as we are about why life keeps dealing us difficult hands at every turn. Life only gives you what it thinks you can handle, but eventually, given enough things, it might just give you too much all at once. Considering our rental property issue of the past two weeks, some health issues we’ve had to deal with and now this, we’re pretty topped up with shit that life can give us.

It’s hot out today, we went to take care of some business with government official regarding our being fired, and on the way home we went into a local gas station/convenience store. The manager on duty gave us a free Slurpee/slushie, so we asked if they were hiring. He said they are hiring for night shifts with their chain of stores.

“Are you crazy?” he asked. “Every time I hire someone new for the night shift they say they can’t work it because they are crazy.”

We smiled, clearly evading the question, laughed and said “I can work a night shift, no problem.”

He then told us we had a great smile and said to come in tomorrow afternoon for an interview.

This job is far beneath our capabilities, and is likely only one night a week, but we are willing to take it if it means eight hours of week on a pay check while we look for something else. We also reassigned with a local temp agency today.

We will continue to look for more work, obviously, because being a gas station attendant isn’t something we desire for even the short term (nor are graveyard shifts); but as we are well aware, having had the life we’ve had…sometimes you gotta do what you gotta  go…and just see what happens.

~Frank et al

New here? Want to figure us out a bit? Go here: http://just-call-me-frank.blogspot.com/p/our-recommendations-weeded-from.html - it’s some of our best from all the writing we’ve done on this blog. <- there is a section on job related worries and issues we've been writing about this year.