Man reads entire online post before abusing author
16 Dec 2020
A social media user, abandoning years of tradition, decided on a whim to read an entire online post, making it a point to examine each turn of phrase closely to understand its full meaning, before unleashing a torrent of slurs and abuse at the author.
Raed Salahbazi said his usually preferred method is skimming and scanning in search of particular keywords such as the names of certain religious sects or hated sports teams, in lieu of reading full posts, in order to save time and energy before insulting and harassing other social media users.
“But I don’t know what happened to me this time,” he said in an interview. “Perhaps it was curiosity, perhaps it was my professor’s advice to count to ten before doing anything, or because the perfect putdown hadn’t yet occurred to me, but I found myself reading all the way to the end.”
Salahbazi said he did not regret absorbing the full range of the author’s argument, however.
“I did not miss a single point that deserves abuse, even those between the lines,” he said. “I felt the creative juices flowing in my mind as I built complex insults tying the author’s beliefs and ideas to his mother’s underwear.”