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It's why when we wrote an article about Gamergate in 2014, our Facebook page was peppered with angry men saying things like "Fuck that cunt. I hope she gets raped" and "She needs to just kill herself." And not just saying those things, but saying them from their open, personal accounts. Accounts with avatars of themselves and their kids. Accounts that showed where they worked, where they lived, where they went to school ... every piece of information you'd ever need to make their lives a living hell, right down to their fucking pets' names.

But they didn't care. They couldn't care. I'm in no way saying that we should feel sorry for them. Self-control is a skill you acquire through practice. And I'm definitely not going to give a how-to guide about ways to protect yourself when using a person's tragedy as a petty insult. Fuck those people and their shoes. I'm just saying that there's more to it than simple stupidity.

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I used to be that guy, by the way. I still feel urges to just open up and vomit flaming bile onto anyone who even slightly pisses me off. It's taken decades of learning to get to my current state, and I can't really even say that I'm happy with where I'm at, mentally and emotionally. But goddamn, you have to make some sort of effort to exercise the "empathy" part of the brain -- if for no other reason, ironically, than to protect your own ass. It's not worth losing your livelihood over a two-second line of trolling.