Sometimes you discover things about yourself in the most ordinary conversations.

While updating bestie Sarah on my progress with two new cat-sitting clients/fur-kin, I noted that though they were still wary of this new person in their house, they were perhaps "starting to understand I'm just an overgrown cat."

That led me to realize that my somewhat perverse joy in triggering trolls is probably related to how a cat likes to play with its prey. Friend and colleague John Deering went a step further, saying I was "knocking things off the trolls' proverbial shelves, so to speak."

What can I say? It amuses me to, in a small way, troll the trolls.

Longtime readers know I'm no fan of Internet trolls. And again, since the ones on this newspaper's comment boards like to say that I believe trolls to be anyone with whom I disagree, here's the actual definition: "someone who deliberately posts inflammatory or otherwise disruptive content with the intent to provoke emotional reactions, derail civil conversation and create chaos."

The trolls on our site have made up numerous stories about me, other columnists, other commenters, and basically anyone who just irks them, especially if that anyone happens to be female, anything left of hard right, a person of color and/or a member of the LGBTQIA community. I've been called pathetic, "the ultimate Karen," "poster girl of the Democrats" (they refuse to........

© Arkansas Online