It’s been a fantastic 24 hours, I’ll tell you what.

When I put the previous essay, on Charlie Kirk’s shooting (because what else are we even allowed to talk about right now) under the subscription paywall, I felt bad. I always want to give everything away for free, but do enjoy eating and sleeping under a roof, and this time, more than anything else, I was already feeling a bit weird about the utter Cujo-ness of the right leaping tall buildings to seize their Reichstag moment.

Turns out, it’s both a good thing I did, and also didn’t really matter anyway, because speaking at all was enough.

On Friday night, when a tsunami of unhinged violent Purge-hooligan shit came flying at me on X, a site I barely use except to crosspost the occasional quip or promote a new piece of work, I genuinely thought it was because of what I’d posted an hour before, which was this: White on white crime is a tragic epidemic sweeping the country. How many more will we lose to white gang violence and rightwing turf wars?It’s the culture, you know. These white celebrities glamorize a criminal lifestyle & young inner-suburb kids get trapped in the school-to-influencer pipeline.

And I sighed, and chuckled, a little ruefully, because of course that riled them up, the people who cry IT’S JUST A JOKE when their lord and savior tells a reporter about a new group of people he wants to murder can’t recognize satire even when it’s wearing an oversized sombrero with SATIRE stitched on it in neon green fuzzy yarn.

Yeah…so that wasn’t it.

Somehow.

What had happened was—and I say this with an exhaustion no simile can encompass—Mr. Elon Musk his own full-chested self quote-tweeted someone compiling a list of “Microsoft employees” who had “celebrated” Kirk’s death to be marked for retribution.

And my name was right there in the screenshot.

Now, first of all, was that screenshot, or literally anything I’ve said on the topic, celebrating anything? Absolutely fucking not.

It was a screenshot of Andrew Tate calling for Civil War (because that’s perfectly all right) and a comment on influencers freaking out as CEOs did post-Luigi, and a link to the Charles In Charge, Apparently essay right here on Substack. An essay that they definitely didn’t fucking read, because it was under a paywall, so I know exactly who the new folks who got a subscription to read it are (hi guys!) and I don’t think any of the Garbagetown treehouse kids are…uh…regular visitors to FUCKING CLOWNTOWN. We are garbage, not clowns. Sheesh!

Second…do I work for Microsoft? Well, I guess, sort of, if you’ve warmed up and you’re ready for a stretch?

I’m a freelance writer. I have been for 22 years. I’ve worked for all kinds of people—that’s how freelancing works. I don’t work for Microsoft per se, but I have written three short stories, in three years, for World of Warcraft, and thus, Blizzard.

You see? It all becomes clear. Gamergate, as, I suppose, was always inevitable, never left our basement, psychologically speaking. I touched a game or two while being a woman, so I am very fun to try to carve up online. The list started as Blizzard employees (still not an employee) and I guess someone thought that didn’t sounds serious enough.

So long story short, I’ve received a number of threats in the last 24 hours, ranging from hopeful prayers for my personal ruination and “firing” from “Microsoft” to full on death threats. Ooh, and I’ve been called a cunt more in 24 hours than ever before!

I’m a big girl, I’ve been on the internet longer than 22 years, and you know that means I’ve had my share of death threats, rape threats, every kind of threat. I’m used to it.

But this has been…unsettling. X is a much darker place than Twitter was, and I don’t even just mean the amount of porn that poured in with the threats. And what’s happening right now, where the right is calling for wholesale slaughter of any and all liberals and having zero repercussions, but people are being fired for being insufficiently sad about Charlie Kirk on Al Gore’s internet, is through the fucking looking glass, even for America, which hasn’t ever really seen the proper side of the looking glass to begin with.

I’m a tough bitch, but I’ve been shakier than I’d like over the last day.

Has Musk deleted the tweet? No, but the person he was quote tweeting has. Microsoft tweeted that they were taking it seriously and investigating. Have I been “fired”? Not yet, and I can’t be, because again, I’m not an employee, though I certainly could lose my contract. Am I particularly worried about that happening? I’d rather not lose a contract, but if my work for Warcraft was a huge part of how I feed my kid I’d probably…you know…have worked for them a little more.

Am I worried I’m going to be killed, or that the people tagging in the FBI to hit the alarums over a link to a Substack essay that, once again, they definitely didn’t read because it was under a paywall? Not…really? They’d have to take a boat and that’s too hard even for appliance repairfolk out here. And these people clearly have no idea who I am or what I do and just think I’m some random Microsoft DEI hire because they’re all gloating about how fired I’m going to be come Monday, which, even if it happens, isn’t exactly going to devastate my life the way they hope.

But it sure throws me for several recursive loops. I guess I thought that paywall kept me a little safer than it does. Remember how I always “joke” that I do it so you have to pay me if you want to call me a stupid bitch and tell me you’re going to strangle me? Much like everything a Republican says, it’s not so much a joke as the dead-ass truth with no punchline. And I guess just being a woman and talking is enough, they do not in any way have to hear what I say to want me gone.

There’s more but I don’t feel like looking at their dumb jerkoff fantasies anymore. If someone can, without a flicker of dissonance, call me a terrorist while literally trying to terrorize me into silence, get me “fired,” and dox me to groypers because they don’t like what they imagine I must have said…well. What is there to say?

It’s died down somewhat. I haven’t engaged or apologized, because that’s how we do now. We’ll see what happens Monday, I guess. We’ll see what happens now that the shooter, shockingly, turned out to be a white straight right wing terminally online weirdo sheriff’s son who hated Kirk for not being Nazi enough.

In the meantime, I just feel very quiet and anxious. Not as anxious for me as I am for all of us. I’m not sure it matters who Tyler Robinson is (and he’s not dead, at some point people will just…ask him) when the right went so mask-off so quickly and elected officials were publicly tweeting about killing all Democrats. Half the nation. More than half, as there’s more registered Dems than GOP. Because they imagined in their dreams that one liberal killed a podcaster.

They aren’t going to put that rabbit back in the hat. Mostly because they don’t want to, and when I said no one was as excited about Kirk’s death as MAGA, I wasn’t fucking wrong, was I? They’re celebrating. We’re terrified.

This is just…what celebrations look like to Nazis.

They didn’t even read it. But I need to die. I simply cannot get my head around that. I could’ve said Charlie Kirk was my very best friend under that paywall. They have no idea. I’m used to being blasted into space for daring to speak—but usually the blasters do actually know what they’re mad about. No longer necessary, it seems. And that is where we are now. I don’t see a lot of routes back.

Does that means I’m going to stop yelling about fascism? No, and go fuck yourself, fascists. I started this Substack specifically to have a place to vent about all this that was separate from the positivity I try to bring to the world in the rest of my work. And they’re not done being murderous psychotic hypocritical assholes with the emotional regulation of an electrocuted cat in heat, so I’m not done calling them out.

Back in the time known as the day, if you weren’t getting a death threat every once in awhile, you were barely using the internet. But no one used their real names, so they usually stayed at about the volume and efficacy of a fart in the wind.

But I’ll tell ya. Being told how you’ll die does hit a little different when you have a small child.

So unless the goldfish use their typical attention span and forget about this in a week, I’ll likely put the next essay under a prophylactic paywall as well, just until they forget my name. And how fat and ugly I am. It didn’t stop it, but it did remove a lot of ammo, and I feel safer that way, just for the moment. I do apologize. I’m not even going to link to this post on the socials, I’ve had my fill of the abuse and I don’t want them to see me addressing it as some kind of victory because I noticed their lunacy.

Nevertheless, that’s about all I’m willing to give those bastards who pretty notably aren’t calling Nick Fuentes a cunt. I’m not going anywhere. You can’t be fired from being yourself. At least not yet.

Wouldn’t it be cool if that were funny?

For now, I’ll leave you with the ray of hilarious hope that was the most recent piece of poo flung at me on that nasty smear of a website. Because, baby, you go right ahead. I love that for you! In fact, I invite all your friends, every single conservative in the world, to do the same. Royalties is royalties no matter what you do with it. Please do go ahead with your powerful, manly, devastating plan to pay me for your piss-baby tantrum.

Keep biting those boots, friends. We still have each other.

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