Bothering People for Democracy: A Log

I’ve been phone slash text banking since sometime in, shit, how even does time work? September? August? Are those months? I think those are months. They sound familiar. Things I have discovered:

Even when you put “just text STOP to unsubscribe” right in the initial message, a lot of people would rather have a bunch of feelings at you. This works, by the way, exactly as well as just writing STOP, but is harder on your fingers, so…you do you, I guess?

A surprising number of people in 2020 think that swearing slash asking for nudes slash discussing my mom’s theoretical sex life is going to shock and alarm the person on the other end. I do hear some questions/alarm about it on the text channel, so I may just be the most jaded person for this job, but I think most people under 50 these days react to “suck my dick” about as much as we do to “thou art a scoundrel and a blackguard.”

Actually, that last one would get my attention. Try that, People Who Have A Lot of Feels About Texting. (And if you have to pay for it, I get that–I really wish carriers would indicate people who have to pay to get texts so we could opt them out pre-emptively–but otherwise? God, you can just ignore it. Been doing it since 2008.)

On threats, I feel like I am indeed one of the more jaded people out there. I reported a couple to the person handling that, just in the hopes that whoever it was would end up on an FBI watchlist, and the team captain was very concerned for my welfare.

But honestly, I grew up AFAB on the Internet. Some Boomer on the other end of an anonymized caller threatening me? Really, dude, you might as well just tell me you’re sending bad vibes in my direction.

Plus, I learned to drive in Boston. “Fuck off and die,” is how we say good night.

After the people who are just Very Upset About Texting In General come Conservatives Who Want You To Hear Opinions. And like the Very Upset About Texting crowd, a lot of them put a great deal of effort into it. If you just say “I’m a conservative,” or “Yay Trump” or whatever, you get the autoresponse and we move on.

A fair few people do not do this. A fair few people really want you to know their feelings about Biden, or liberals, or the Satanic baby-killing conspiracy of the month. Does this mean a conspiracy to kill Satanic babies? It’s fun to ask. It’s also fun to ask them to define “socialism” and then how it applies to Biden. You get paragraphs of misspelled texts with A LOT OF ANGRY CAPSLOCK.

I like to imagine their forehead veins throbbing.

Other people who don’t get that you can just…not respond? I Don’t Vote Because Both Sides Guy. We don’t get demographic information, but I would place non-insubstantial bets that this guy is white, cis and, well, a guy. He certainly has the white cis guy love for the sound of his own voice, and he does not like being told that he’s immature.

Hands down the best, though, was the following exchange:

Person: “Oh, I’m not voting.”
Me: Entire trained paragraph about how voting is a great way to make your voice heard, and there are a lot of important down-ballot races even if you’re not in a swing state or don’t like the candidates at the federal level, etc. etc. well-meaning etc.
Person: “Have you ever heard of the Illuminati?”
Me, inwardly: Well, this conversation is a VERY DIFFERENT conversation than the one I thought I was in.
Person: Goes on to tell me about evil old men who control everything (I mean this is true but it’s not like McConnell and Graham are making any fucking secret about it) and your vote doesn’t count because they’ll just pick the president.
Me: “…okay, when I said everyone should get involved in society, I should clearly have made an exception or two.”

I swear to God this happened.

I am endlessly regretful that I didn’t respond with FNORD FNORD FNORD.

Anyhow. Election soon. If you live in the US, vote Democrat (or Biden/Harris on the Working Parties ticket if you live in NY) or piss off. I’ve had cider and I’m done being diplomatic.