Skepticism

Lindy West Doesn’t Cry Anymore

Lindy West is amazing. If you’re not reading everything she writes every day all the time, then it’s time you start. Because one day you’re going to die and that day you’ll be sitting there, on the autopsy table, and the ME is going to be like “[Your Name] died from a lack of reading the smartest and funniest woman on the internet. I determine this death to be a tragedy. No further investigation is needed.”

Yet, despite being the person I want to be when I grow up, learn how to write and get a job, Lindy cries. Because of trolls. She cries every day. 

Or at least, she did… before she unlocked the secrets of the horrible trolls of the internet. And it’s not pretty. And it’s not particularly shocking. But hearing her tell this story makes me love her harder than I already did.

 

 

There. Now you love her, too. Go hug a MRA. (Just kidding.)

Elyse

Elyse MoFo Anders is the bad ass behind forming the Women Thinking, inc and the superhero who launched the Hug Me! I'm Vaccinated campaign as well as podcaster emeritus, writer, slacktivist extraordinaire, cancer survivor and sometimes runs marathons for charity. You probably think she's awesome so you follow her on twitter.

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19 Comments

  1. A lot do seem to usually have a little story they like to trot out about how nasty a particular woman (ex-wife etc) was to them. Or how all the feminists they have ever met have just called them rape apologists and not been at all nice (wonder why?)

    Might be too simplistic but a nice way of viewing them to remove the fear and hate. I liked the video.

  2. When I was a young lad, I had a dog. One afternoon, he got his paw caught in the slats of a fence; it was obviously pretty painful. While I was getting him out of his predicament, he sank his teeth in my arm. It hurt a lot, but since that day I’ve never really had any great urge to do anything with trolls other than pity them. And wish they had owners who cared as much as I did for Ben.

    Now excuse me while I go pour some whisky and mourn poor Ben while scratching Jess about the ears, like she loves.

  3. I liked this so much. It reminds me that my fourth grade tormenters had to stay in Weston, MO, and I got to move away to a much more interesting life.

    1. (But regardless of what came first, the truth remains that they have earned their lot in life many times over by now, so any sympathy is out of the question.)

  4. So odd that Lindy’s description of the vlogging MRA is more or less the MRA’s textbook description of a “mangina.”

    No wonder. The people MRAs hate the most are themselves.

  5. For some reason, neither of the links brings up any content in my browser. The Jezebel page is a blank page with Jezebel links in the margins. lindywest.net is just a lot of JavaScript with no content.

    Any idea what combination of Internet viruses I need to infect my system with to see these pages?

  6. Awesome, just awesome, I love her now, thanks for the link.

    amm1, from an IT guy, make sure you have all of your updates, including java. What browser? OS? Need more info.

  7. I’d have a lot more love for Lindy West if she’d refrain from writing about science for Jezebel; it’s a problem for the site in general, but Lindy is a notable offender. She has minimal scientific literacy and her posts suffer from major confirmation bias. Any study that backs up her preconceived ideas is treated as 100% valid and definitive, but anything that challenges her worldview is automatically suspect and invalid.

    1. I think that’s more to do with Jezebel than Lindy – all of their reporting is really magazine-y with hints of tabloid.

  8. Bookmarked this earlier and finally got round to watching it. Funny (and true), but really, she’s way too nice. She would have been utterly justified in mocking the shit out of that guy once she found out how pathetic he was. Yeah, I get the point about ‘good people don’t hurt the weak’, but a weak person can still be an asshole, and as far as I’m concerned anyone who trolls others with insulting comments thoroughly deserves being trolled themselves.

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