I first wanted to post a cartoon of a bare human arse as my solemn message to all online Trolls but decided that in these trying times it may be misinterpreted: As pornography, sexism and insulting to a woman's dignity if female, or an invitation to be sodomized or solidarity with Gay pride if male.
One of the primary reasons I gave up on Facebook (never to regret) were the Trolls that seemed to come out of the woodwork at every step wearing the widest assortment of masks, but quite unitary in their task: to argue, demean and intimidate people little known to them or even complete strangers.
These comprise all manner of Desh Bhakts(Indian Hindu Patriots) or zombified Modi cultists, many of them NRIs( Indian origin emigrants) or those who will scoot abroad at the first opportunity, but always up in arms to defend Hinduism and Mother India's Honour and Virginity. Not to forget the innumerable Muslim bigots who try to first pose as liberals (often hiding behind Hindu and Christian names) and later playing the victim, pointing shakey accusatory fingers screeching: Islamophobia!!
Once I got a friend request from someone called Kaushik Trehan, who judiciously followed each and every Facebook post I made, which bordered on stalking. And what I found very surprising was an extremely Pro-Muslim slant in many of his comments on my posts, which I found questionable for someone bearing a Hindu name and especially as being an abject atheist, I neither ever expressed any Muslim bashing Hindu-rightwing views nor any support for their constant cries of victimhood.
Furthermore, this Kaushik Trehan had a very familiar way of writing which I found remarkably similar to that of a certain Mr Mazumdar. A Facebook friend who I never met personally, but knew to be a carpet bagger who married into a very moneyed Muslim family, and was representing his wife's family business in one of the Arab countries. And who spent all his free and working time on social media posing as an Indian liberal, either bashing Modi or bemoaning the plight of Muslims in relatively sophisticated English in his posts. So a quick google image reverse search revealed that the profile picture was indeed of one Kaushik Sengupta and but not a Trehan, who was a research scholar at the Delft University and an email to him had him confirm that it was not his Facebook profile. So I wrote an ominous post about people stealing identities and making fake profiles to monitor friends (Stassi-like) to gauge their real view on the "one true religion, and its proponents." Within a matter of minutes, the Kaushik Trehan exploded into a flurry of F-words accusing me of being a Bastard, an Islamophob, of being a closet Hindu Supremacist and also a Misogynist (but I thought it was a necessity in the religion of peace). He also took screenshots of my profile page which had numerous photographs of my very young daughter and pasted them to all over the Woke and Liberal groups on Facebook warning them all about what a scoundrel I was.
His abuse too, word by word sounded exactly like the ones regularly used by Mr Mazumdar in his regular rants, but who incidentally still doesn't acknowledge that the fake profile was his and has been playing the victim card since.
Let's also not forget the entitled angry feminists, many of them single(not surprisingly), others mooching off their well-earning husband and living a relatively luxurious life and those living on generous alimony courtesy the bastard of an ex-husband, but always chiding people (men) about rape and the plight of the poor unprivileged women. There are also those whose mantra is a sort of a reverse of a Door's song "Men seem wicked when you are unwanted(or untouched)" for being obnoxious, obese, ugly and angry.
One such character was a woman who I knew since my early teenage who despite being accepted as "one of the guys," demanded not just beer goggles but partial or preferably full blindness to be seen as attractive by a normal man( and no she didn't have a heart of gold either). And with age taking its toll and despite her arrange-marriage snared husband, her appearance and demeanour didn't improve and neither did her grudges lessen towards the human male. And so when she once posted a meme that proclaimed all men as rapists, I didn't loose an opportunity to bait her and I immediately wrote a comment congratulating her for coming out of the closet and requested that share publicly how many times she or her female relatives had to undergo such victimization (got raped) along with the names of the perpetrator (here it was my morbid curiosity as to whether he was blind or a contender for world's biggest pervert title), as the world needs to know the truth about rape and victims should be bold enough to face the culprits to bring them to justice. She promptly deleted my comment, but I had already copied it, and immediately pasted it back. This continued about half a dozen times till she finally deleted her post and next unfriended me.
Was I trolling her? Probably!
Do I regret it? Not the least!!
Plus, let not forget the most pathetic kind of trolls around; the squeaky, pesky "Manginas" or the Male Feminists who hope that their pathetic online squabbles with male sexists and misogynists would endear them to the female of the species and possibly score them a girlfriend, maybe they would even get to loose their virginity at 28. There are also those who would proudly show their posts to their other halves hoping to score brownie points redeemable as a BJ in the best of days, but more likely just a lesser intensity of nagging.
And there's also the whole Woke Brigade and SJWs, facebook feuds with whom would require a few more pages of disdainful venom to describe them all.
In short, I was done tolerating angry, disgruntled people of all ages, faiths and genders seeking self-validation via online bravado, aggression and self-aggrandizement or self-professed victimhood and the endless rhetoric and vitriol. Especially when most of them in real life are meek, resentful underdogs who can only thrive in the quasi anonymity of the internet and social media with their online personas as Facebook Falcons, Twitter Tigers and WhatsApp Warriors.
Unfortunately, LinkedIn the only platform that I still use too has no lack of them.
And the only effective tool that works with these pests is not winning an argument, as engaging with them eventually brings one down to their level, but Blocking right away.
And that's what I do and have no qualms about it at all.
Finally fed up, I made him sit down and told him," Zero"! But I have had over 20 outright rejections to my pitches( I stopped counting after 20) as my work of building safe, sustainable and affordable riverboats and nautical equipment is seen as very limited in size and scalability. I was also told that I was too old to start a Startup, was mocked for not having a formal technical education, that my designs were pinched from the internet, that I lacked a team, traction and that it is a matter of doubt whether my perennially flood-prone State of Assam in NE India which is also crisscrossed by the Brahmaputra and other large rivers has any requirements of boats at all.
That the tiny grants I clawed out from here and there, the modest amount I managed to scrounge as a soft loan along with all my savings were poured into work, prototyping technology trials and development. That I worked 7 days a week, no longer have a family or personal life, live on a hand to mouth budget, got grievously injured with power tools multiple times, suffered from nerve damage and occasional temporary partial blindness from overworking with computer screens and everything that he saw on the display table was either designed, drafted, 3-printed, cast machined and welded either by me or in my presence. That I researched designed, drafted, and drew the CAD diagrams and 3d renderings by myself, sit with propeller design and NavCad software and the same with all the patents I filled. I interact with experts worldwide and do approach professionals like Naval architects and mechanical engineers at times for verifying my work, but honestly, find them unsure, ignorant or incompetent most of the time.