Magazines are irrelevant, they say.

And yet, somehow, every December, scores of people appear willing to commit murder because they don’t like Time Magazine’s choice for Person of the Year.

This December that person is Greta Thunberg, the stone-faced Swedish teenager you think about every time a cashier asks you if you need a plastic bag.

If your answer is “no thanks,” you might think of Greta and feel proud of yourself. If your answer is “yes please,” you might think of Greta and feel bad about yourself. Either way, you think of Greta. And that is why she’s Person of the Year.

But whenever Greta Thunberg is praised, she is belittled in equal measure. The teenage climate activist has a way of enraging people in ways her contemporaries — adult scientists and activists — could only dream about. We’ve come a long way since kids dozed off in science class watching An Inconvenient Truth. Now a kid is leading the charge against environmental degradation and it is adults who are asleep at the wheel. That, or they’re attacking Thunberg on the Internet.

The 16-year-old is a frequent target of far-right insults online, most notably at the small hands of U.S. President Donald Trump. On Thursday morning the president tweeted the following about Thunberg’s new title: “So ridiculous. Greta must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Greta, Chill!”

“Chill!” demands the 73-year-old world leader presumably jealous of a tribute given to a teenager that he received himself in 2016. (Noticeably absent from this fray and every other social media incident involving her husband was anti-bullying advocate, First Lady Melania Trump.)

But it isn’t just President Trump who has it out for Thunberg. It’s a sizable portion of his base. There’s a reason why he likes going after the activist: she’s an easy target for insecure men who hate themselves. How else do you characterize human beings (most of whom do appear to be of the male gender) who cannot abide a teenage girl with strong opinions. A quick search of Thunberg’s name on Twitter turns up pages of vile insults that can’t and shouldn’t be repeated here. One ultra-conservative commentator remarked that Thunberg makes him “want to dump waste oil in the ocean.”

It’s one thing to disagree with Thunberg’s message or to believe she is being ill-advised by the adults in her life. But much of the criticism levelled at her is personal, cruel and unhinged.

When historians of some future period on earth (if such a future exists) study our own, it’s reasonable to assume they’ll want to know why one young person’s quest to prevent humanity’s decline made so many people mad with anger. An explanation, besides sheer meanness and ignorance, is that adults are embarrassed that a kid managed to do what they couldn’t: take clear action to combat a problem most of us ignore.

The good news is Thunberg doesn’t appear too fazed by the attacks sent her way. She may be young but like any hardcore activist she is single-minded. She appears to care about almost nothing beyond her cause. Why else does a person sail across the world?

In 1927, Time Magazine named 25-year-old pilot Charles Lindbergh its very first Man of the Year after he flew solo, non-stop, from New York to Paris.

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In 2019, Time Magazine has chosen to honour a world traveller who prefers sail boats to airplanes, not because she is afraid of heights, but because she is afraid for our future.

It’s remarkable to think that the watershed journey Lindbergh made less than a century ago is exactly the kind of journey Thunberg would refuse to take today.

Her critics call her alarmist, among many other cruder things. But they do so at their own risk. No one knows for certain what will become of planet earth and its people. But it’s unlikely history will judge kindly those who told Greta Thunberg to go to the movies.

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