Misha's minions' courageously confront the enemy

From Orcinus's very manly comments:

About four years ago, I was new to the world of blogs. They fascinated me, and I read lots of them from all over the political spectrum. I was sixteen at the time. One day, I came to the Anti-idiotarian Rottweiler (henceforth AIR)[link]. It appalled me. Innocently, I began commenting. One day, I very nerdily defended the European Union, of which I am a citizen through dual US-Irish citizenship. I don't quite remember the context of that specific discussion, but it didn't jump out at me as something that I would be haunted by. However, I soon started recieving threatening messages from AIR readers, and I was personally discussed in the comments on the blog. Some of the threates were quite imaginative and graphic, and they stuck in my head. Afraid that I had done something wrong, I didn't tell my parents, even as I began having problems sleeping and became distracted in school. I couldn't stop thinking about the fact that otherwise normal-seeming, probably middle-aged, middle-class Americans, some almost certainly with kids of their own were fantasizing about tormenting, and even killing, a sixteen-year-old girl exclusively because of her opinions, nationality, and politics.

Obviously, it wasn't bright of me to comment on a blog by such clearly unhinged people, but the whole ordeal was a rude introduction to the darkest side identity politics in the United States. It wasn't until six months had passed that I could go a day without thinking about what might happen if I ever met any of the AIR folks in person. To this day, I sometimes wonder.
undergrad | 01.08.07 - 12:25 am | #