Some guy called me an idiot on the Internet and I eviscerated him with words.

He probably didn’t realize that he was reading original content on Reddit and that the author would see his comments. He definitely didn’t realize he was the idiot in the scenario. A couple people tried to point out the flaws in his reasoning, and then they just downvoted him into oblivion, so that the site hid his comment.

But…uh…I didn’t let it go.

Something snapped and I dug in and tore him to pieces, pointing out over and over again how ignorant he was. To his discredit, he kept responding, which only made him look stupider, and I kept ripping him to shreds until he actually apologized for insulting me and started sobbing about how mean I was.

And the thing is, I was mean. I was vicious. Because people who go around insulting people anonymously usually do it because it helps them feel superior, and usually no one has the time to knock them down, so they just go around being jerks and thinking they’re right and everyone else is wrong. But every once in a while one of them bumps into me, and I happen to have a little time on my hands, and a more impressive vocabulary, and ability to use logic, and understanding of how to argue, and they learn that once you wake the dragon, the dragon just presses forward until the opponent is destroyed because dragons do not like waking up.

And this guy was destroyed. I almost felt a little bad. I almost thought I should say, “Yeah, sorry, I took it too far,” because when he finished Googling all the big words, he probably felt way more insulted by the thread than I was by him calling me an idiot, especially since my insults were based on his actual intellectual shortcomings while his were based on an utter lack of understanding of anything. But I didn’t apologize. Instead, I picked his last shred of dignity and finished him with a final humiliating truth bomb that, I imagine, helped him understand just how outclassed he was.

So…I actually felt kind of bad/weird about excoriating a common troll in such a nuclear fashion. Blame it on the dragon part. I may be but little, but I am fierce. I try to be nice, all the time, to everyone, no matter who or what they are, but sometimes, something else takes over and I stop feeling like everyone deserves compassion, and get punitive instead. When I have this kind of cognitive dissonance, it always ends up in the Dragon Comics, and there are probably 2 more days of this thread, because I feel bad about feeling good about it.