I've written a lot of negative things about Donald Trump on the Internet. A cursory look at Twitter would tell you that this hardly qualifies as a unique pastime, but it's true. And one of the great things about living in America is that I'm allowed to get on these digital pages and make all sorts of jokes about our president without fear of being jailed or physically beaten or even killed for making cracks about a video file labeled "DonaldTrumpPeeTape.mp4." But that part of the Constitution is something that Donald Trump doesn't seem to enjoy very much. His constant and ever-ratcheting-up attacks on media freedoms and norms speak to that, as does his entire authoritarian sensibility. And so this story that broke today thanks to Gizmodo is particularly unsettling. Many people who have said negative things about the president online have been getting robocalls saying that they should stop doing that.

It turns out these calls are a "prank" that has come out of an app called Ownage Pranks. Now, to some this will be reason enough to dismiss it. "It's a prank!" "Who cares?!" "Can't you take a joke?" Well, to that I have to ask, what's the actual difference between receiving a threatening phone call about your anti-Trump opinions and receiving a threatening "prank" phone call about your anti-Trump opinions? To the person receiving it, it's still menacing, even if it's a joke. Just like saying racist things "ironically" doesn't mean you're not being racist; if anything it means you're being racist and you're acknowledging you should know better.

The same is true here. And just because a threat is vague and therefore likely not criminal doesn't mean that it's not terrifying and morally reprehensible. These calls show us a glimpse of one of the darkest possible futures that our country could find itself in. The fact that the people who received these calls believed they were legitimate shows us how fast we're moving in that dangerous direction. So if you receive a call like this, you can relax knowing that it's only a prank. At least for now.