“Hi William – you are a pole smoking butt pirate. I loved Kid Rock last night and not your gay idle Bad Bunny. Eat Shit.”

While the majority of my job involves writing about entertainment in a way that’s siloed away from politics, I knew I was wading into raging waters when I agreed to write a column comparing and contrasting Sunday night’s dueling halftime shows. As a fan of Bad Bunny as well as country music, I tried to watch both the NFL’s official presentation and Turning Point USA’s All-American Halftime Show with an open mind.

Related Stories

Netflix Will Stream ‘The Secret Agent’ in Brazil, Opens New São Paulo Headquarters

Joe Rogan Says He Wasn't Nominated for Golden Globes' Best Podcast Award Because He Refused to Pay the $500 Entry Fee: 'I Don't Want to Be a Part of That'

In the end, I wrote that the hastily assembled, Kid Rock-headlining TPUSA event was no match for Bad Bunny’s jubilant and welcoming celebration, and my essay took it to task. I braced for plenty of feedback on social media and comments on the post.

Popular on Variety

Little did I know, though, that so many people would take the time to email me their enraged sentiments. It was surprising given the barrier to entry: It’s one thing to fire off a reply on X, but it’s another to click on my author page, find my email address, draft a message and then send it. There’s inherently a level of intimacy conveyed by email. The sender wants to know that I see it, to get as close as possible via my most prioritized messages.

Most writers are smart enough to never feed the trolls, since it gives them the attention they crave. But something about receiving these particular emails inspired me to respond to a handful, perhaps try to pinpoint why they crave this attention.

The first message I responded to struck me as intellectual compared to the emails stuffed with the most crude homophobic language and egregious typos imaginable, two commonalities in nearly all of the responses. In contrast, this sounded downright scholarly:

“Quick question, how long before the halftime show began, did you complete the article Variety posted? I’m no fan of the........

© Variety