Betty White Got Me Canceled by Jim Parisi
Benjamin gets caught in an online storm after making an ill-advised joke about Betty White's death.
"Were you drinking and posting last night?" my wife, Andrea, asked as she poured me a cup of coffee on what I thought was going to be a lazy Sunday morning.
"I had a couple of beers, and I was on my phone," I said, not sure what she was getting at. "So I guess I was technically drinking and posting. Why?"
"Read it and weep." She slid her phone toward me on the kitchen counter.
"This might be my finest work yet. Clear, concise, biting but not mean." I tried but failed to fight back a grin.
I had written the post well past midnight, when Andrea was sound asleep, as was everyone else I could think of to text about my amusing observation. So I logged on Facebook for the first time in over a week to let my small coterie of friends in on the fun. Then I drained the last of my beer and headed upstairs to bed.
"Just had to ring in 2022 by being a wiseass?"
"Technically, it was January second," I said, "but that sounds about right."
"Before you scroll to the comments, do me the honor of reading it out loud, so I can get the full sensory experience of having the words wash over me."
"I'm not sure I like where this is going."
"Trust me, it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better." She sipped from her oversized mug and rolled her hand toward me. "Please proceed."
"You want me to read the whole thing?"
"It's short. Quit stalling."
"In due time, woman. You can't rush artistry." I cleared my throat theatrically. "'On My Recent Trouble Focusing.' That's the title."
"I got that. Very clever. Now get on with it."
I cleared my throat again, this time for real. "Okay, here it goes. 'Sorry if I've seemed off lately. I still haven't processed Betty White's death. Taken too soon at ninety-nine. Why couldn't she have held out one more month? Seeing her make it to a hundred would have been special for all of us. It's so unfair! This is the worst year ever!'"
"There's that smile again." She shook her head. "You're really proud of yourself, aren't you?
"What? It's funny. And true."
"I'm glad you think so."
"You don't?"
"Don't give me that puppy dog look." She pulled off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "It's clever. So help me if you smile I will walk out of this room. But I don't think it's a good move to make light of the death of someone who was considered a national treasure."
"I wasn't making fun of her death. You, of all people, should understand that."
"You might know that, and I might know that." She opened up her laptop. "But, wow, the commenters do not feel the same way."
"I haven't looked. And you turned off all my notifications after that Trump post I made last year, remember? So I'm afraid I'll have to be blissfully ignorant."
"Let me see if this will bring you to your senses." She pointed at the screen. "Here's a good one. Short, to the point, representative of the tone of most of the others I saw. 'Why don't you find a bridge and jump off it.' That's by Mary Nunzio."
"Aunt Mary?"
"Wait, you have an Aunt Mary? Do I know her?"
"You never met her," I said. "She's my father's second cousin."
"Family or not. You really pissed her off."
"It doesn't make sense. She's got dementia and has lived in a nursing home for years. I doubt she has access to a computer."
"It doesn't matter if it's Aunt Mary or some pimply-faced teenager living with his parents in a Soviet-era high-rise in Belarus. This is just the tip of the iceberg." She tapped the screen. "People are not being shy about unloading on you."
"I have like a hundred Facebook friends. How many people could have seen it?"
"People are forwarding it to their friends. One guy posted it on Twitter with the hashtag letsganguponthisbettywhitehater."
"One guy with a stupid hashtag. I think I'm safe."
"He's got a million followers. I suggest you delete all your social media accounts ASAP. Those people are out for blood. First it's the comments, then the threats, then the doxxing." She had explained doxxing to me after my Trump post. "Next thing you know, we're receiving suspicious packages with white powder leaking out of the gaps in the cardboard."
"I doubt things will get that bad. It was just a stupid joke about people overreacting, not about Betty White. I'll just take it down."
"It's too late for that. There's a subreddit about it, /r/endbettywhitehate." She snorts as she scrolls on her phone. "Sorry, I shouldn't make light of this. But those creepy incels want your head on a pike."
"How do you know where to find all this?"
"I set a Google alert with your name when I saw the Twitter hashtag. It's blowing up my phone."
"I think the pandemic has changed you," I said. "You were never this plugged in before last year."
"Nowhere to go, nothing to do, nobody to see. I started to find my people online. I told you all about them. You know, the online book clubs, the sourdough groupies."
"I thought you were just sharing your interests, not infiltrating lynch mobs."
"Once you're online," she said, "the whole sordid mess makes itself available."
"You're the one who forced me to get a Facebook account after the pandemic started."
"First of all" - she jabbed the counter with her index finger - "I didn't force you. And second" - another, more forceful jab - "you were constantly asking me for updates about our friends. So I cut out the middleman and set you up."
"And look where it's gotten me."
"So it's my fault."
"You know that's not what I meant." I put my hand on top of hers. "But what do I need to do to make this go away?"
"It'll be over by the end of the day," she said, "or maybe earlier, if some other doofus writes something equally stupid."
I decided to let that pass. "People are saying nasty stuff about me. I'm worried that some idiot is going to take it too far and come after us."
"That might be a bit of an overreaction," she said. "You're not that big of a story. And people will get bored and move on."
"Let's hope so."
"At the very least you should set your Facebook and Twitter accounts to private. And just to be safe, do the same for your LinkedIn. Then batten down the hatches."
"Who are you?"
"This is all basic stuff everyone should know." Her icy blue eyes peered at me over the top of her glasses. "This should be over soon. Then you can live your life again. Just make sure to keep your insults of the dead private."
"It wasn't an... oh, never mind."
That afternoon, my phone buzzed as I was rummaging through the cupboard for a pre-dinner snack. The texter identified herself as a producer for the local public radio station. Would love to have you on to talk about what it's like to be a private citizen who has become the subject of online vitriol.
My first thought was to delete the text, report it as junk, block her number, and crawl into bed. I even went upstairs to lie down, in my clothes, on top of the comforter.
As I stared at the cracked plaster in the ceiling, I thought about how, if I was doomed to be a pariah, I might as well go down swinging. After nearly two years of sitting around while the world fell apart, waiting for the next bad thing to happen, I would finally take action.
"That's not a good idea," Andrea said, when I rushed down to the kitchen to tell her. "You're not cut out for public speaking. Even if you were, you'd only be drawing more attention to yourself, which is the opposite of what you should be doing."
"But I could set the record straight."
"There is no record to set straight." She smashed a clove of garlic with the side of her chef's knife blade. "You need the fire to die out. Doing some stupid radio interview will just keep the embers burning."
"I get what you're saying, but I think I'm going to do it."
"Hey, I know that look. That's your smitten look. Not to be confused with your horny look, which I also know all too well." The corners of her mouth turned up. "No, this is the one you had the night we first met, when it took you the whole night to notice that I was looking over at you."
"I'm not sure I know this look you speak of." I knew the look, but refused to give her the satisfaction of acknowledging it.
"And you still get it when you meet someone you have a thing for, or would if you weren't married to someone so fabulous." She leaned forward to get her nose close to my face. "Yep, there's the telltale flickering in the irises. The dark brown is definitely lighter."
"You're being ridiculous."
"And you're blushing?" She snapped her fingers. "Is this the morning woman who always makes you crack up?"
"Uh, maybe."
"It is!" Her head bobbed several times. "I see what's going on, You've got a little crush on her, maybe more than a little."
"You like her, too."
"She's funny. But I think you're interested in more than her sense of humor."
"Come on. You're being silly."
"The eyes don't lie." She narrowed hers, not taking her gaze off mine. "But crush or not, she's still the enemy when it comes to this story. Stay away. I'm begging you."
"Would it be fair to say, Benjamin, that you did not expect your Facebook post to make you the object of condemnation?"
When the producer called last night, she said I would be interviewed for three minutes during the local segment of Monday's morning show. That would either fly by, I thought, or seem like an eternity. But I told her I would be awaiting her call at five minutes to eight.
"Correct, Monica, I definitely did not expect to become the internet's flavor of the day." Andrea had come up with that phrase during our bedtime brainstorming session. She told me to avoid negativity, to put everything in a positive light.
"If I may ask, why did you make the decision to post something you must have known would be so controversial?"
"Well, Monica." I paused. Andrea was yelling from the kitchen that I could stop repeating her name, that she wasn't into me, that I should get over it and stick to the script. I did my best to ignore her.
"I was merely trying to make a comment," I continued, "on the hysteria surrounding Betty White's death. How people seized that moment, as they always seem to do, to make it about themselves."
"You don't see that overreaction as an understandable part of the grieving process for a beloved public figure?"
"I get that, Monica." I flashed my middle finger toward the kitchen. "But the responses were somewhat hysterical."
"Don't say hysterical," Andrea yelled. "It makes you sound condescending and sexist."
"As I was saying, Monica, I think the responses were meant to draw attention to the people posting them, almost as if Betty White were a mere vessel, into which they could pour all of their pent-up feelings about the troubling state of the world." I came up with that last night, my only contribution that Andrea didn't reject.
I sensed that I was speaking too rapidly. I had banned Andrea from my line of sight during the interview. Now I found myself wanting to see her reaction to how this was going over.
"Let's remember," I said, "that the year started with a riot at the Capitol, and the pandemic continues to plague the world."
"Yes, but - "
"Worst year ever," I added, hastily, "was already a distinct possibility before the death of a ninety-nine-year-old celebrity."
"We're nearing the end of our time, Benjamin. But let me ask you about the reaction your post has been getting. You've been the subject of vitriol on social media, and there's even a subreddit devoted to you. How has that been for you and your family?"
"It's been tough, Monica. My wife and I have been the victims of a smear campaign that's completely disproportionate. And she thinks I'm an idiot for inviting more of that hatred by agreeing to this interview."
"We're glad you decided to join us, Benjamin. But could you elaborate on some of the reactions you've been receiving?"
"I didn't think it was possible for a regular person going about his life to be subjected to this level of public condemnation, Monica. But in the past day I've had a nonstop stream of vulgar insults and threats hurled at me by a bunch of losers who have nothing better to do with their pathetic lives than to find something to feel aggrieved about."
I heard the clatter of ceramic in the kitchen sink and looked over to see Andrea racing into the dining room, shaking her head rapidly and making a throat slashing motion with her right hand. I took that to mean that sticking to the script might have been a better idea.
Monica hustled me off the air after my tirade, thanking me for my candor and wishing me good luck in weathering the storm.
I didn't want to deal with Andrea and the recriminations I would surely be facing for ignoring her advice. I grabbed my coat from the rack and opened the door to immerse myself in the bracing January air.
"You can run but you can't hide." Andrea's voice rang out, penetrating the interior and storm doors as I zipped up my coat on the porch. "Just be careful out there and keep your head down, Public Enemy Number One."
After a cacophony of alerts for incoming texts and phone calls, which I let go directly to voicemail, I turned off my phone to have some peace while I mulled my options for containing this conflagration. In no rush to throw myself back in the cauldron, I stretched my daily three miles to closer to seven.
I eschewed my usual stop at the coffee shop for a latte and buried my chin in my chest whenever I crossed paths with other pedestrians. My photo, taken from my Facebook account, was plastered all over Reddit. I didn't want to take the chance that I would be recognized and confronted. Luckily, the few people I encountered paid me no mind. For the time being, I was only internet infamous.
When I returned home a few minutes after ten, I girded myself for an onslaught from Andrea.
"Hey, babe," she said, from her work station on the sofa. "Did you have a nice walk?"
"Uh, yeah." I stood in the doorway, trying to decipher if her serenity was an act. "Have you been online?"
"Nothing to worry about there. You're yesterday's news. Everyone's moved on to some Kim Kardashian Photoshop controversy."
"Really?" The prospect of this whole affair blowing over was a relief. Completely unexpected, but I wasn't going to complain.
"No, not really." She tossed a throw pillow at me. I let it bounce off my chest. "Congratulations, Ben. Your little radio tantrum has done exactly what I told you it would do. You are now the trending topic on social media. Your phone must be blowing up."
"I turned it off because all the notifications were driving me crazy."
"If you had listened to me yesterday morning, this whole thing might have blown over. But that would have been too easy, and now we're both getting hounded." She played a voicemail from a reporter with the Style section of The Washington Post, who was writing a story about the fiasco. "They tracked me down after you didn't answer their calls while you were on your walkabout."
"But if we don't get back to them -"
"They'll still run the story. If I thought you would follow a script, I'd say we could get you to apologize and promise to do better, let them get a glimpse of our domestic tranquility, and paint you as a victim of a cancel culture run amok, who only wants to get his normal life back. The usual damage control."
"That sounds good. Let's do that."
"Your little radio performance makes me think that's too big a risk."
"So what do we do?"
"We do nothing," she said, raising her voice. "Nothing! Got it?"
"For how long?"
"For as long as it takes for this to die down."
"How long will that be?"
"I don't know, a day or two. I was joking earlier, but something like a Kim Kardashian Photoshop incident will emerge to suck all the oxygen out of the room."
"So until that happens," I said, "I just need to put up with all the mockery and abuse?"
"Yeah, but you should be able to tune out the world. You pretty much do it already. I'm going to try to do the same."
"Sorry for dragging you into this. I should have listened to you about feeding the trolls."
"My dear, you force fed them like they were Muscovy ducks you were trying to fatten up to make troll pâté."
"Except I'm the one getting smeared."
"Good one." She smiled for the first time all morning. "Keep that sense of humor. You're going to need it to survive the next couple of days."
That couple of days stretched until the end of the week. I remained disciplined, and when my willpower faded, Andrea's penetrating gaze would bore a hole in my back whenever she stole upon me hunched over my phone.
But she caught me by surprise on Sunday morning, when I thought I had a few hours alone before she roused herself for the day. My fifteen minutes should have been over, an interminable seven days since I put that target on my back, and I thought there was no harm in taking a peek at the discourse I had inspired.
I had just opened the article in The Onion from Tuesday that Andrea had forbade me to read - the headline, "Area Man Will Insult Your Grandma for Food," immediately told me her instincts were correct - when an abrupt "aha!" sent my coffee cup skittering across the counter.
"What the hell are you doing up so early?" I asked as I mopped up the spill with a paper towel. "And why did you scare the crap out of me like that?"
"I heard you get up and something told me you were up to no good."
"I'm not up to no good. I was just thinking that things have died down and I was curious to see what people have been saying about me."
"Absolutely not! You started this fire, and you need to let it burn until there's not even a molecule of oxygen left to feed it. Things never turn out well for the arsonist who sticks around to watch his handiwork."
"I said I was thinking about it, not that I was going to do it," I lied. "But what you just said has given me a better idea. Meet me out back at high noon. And bring some marshmallows."
"Why the hell did he drag me out here in this cold? And what's this nonsense about marshmallows?" Andrea is talking loud enough for the neighbors on either side of us to hear as she opens the back door. Her tone is the same cocktail of annoyance, wariness, and weariness, tinged with amusement, that has sustained her since I became a pariah.
"What are you doing?" she asks, looking down at me from the deck railing. "And what's with the fire in the middle of the day?"
Her confusion is justifiable. After all, I am sitting on a lawn chair in our anemic backyard, the ubiquitous summertime weeds in remission for the winter, in front of the firepit we haven't used since the early days of the pandemic, when we were desperate for any communal activity that could take place safely outdoors. And I'm flanked on either side by two large tubs that used to hold our kids' toys but are now overflowing with papers.
"Just decluttering." I pull a newspaper section off the top of the pile and toss it in the raging flame. "That's the Post's hatchet job. Yes, I read it. Sue me."
She comes down the steps and approaches gingerly, as if she thinks I might be having a breakdown. I hold out another section of newsprint as an offering. "Come take a turn. I find the crackling when it hits the flame very satisfying."
"I'm sure it is. But why are you doing this?"
"To purge all the negativity that has swirled around me all week. It's an exorcism. "
"You realize that all this stuff is still online, right?" She tosses the Style section into the pit. It crackles and hisses, feeding the orange flame. "That is very satisfying, but it doesn't change anything."
"It makes me feel better. Isn't that enough?"
She reaches into the pile and pulls out a sheaf of printed pages. "What in the actual hell?" She flips through them. "Did you print out the internet?"
"I printed out some of the Reddit and Twitter threads and the Facebook comments under my post."
"You realize that if you printed out everything written about you this week, it would fill up the entire first floor of our house. You're fighting a losing battle."
"I know, but I need to do this. Please join me."
She pulls up a chair and wedges herself between me and one of the tubs. We take turns stoking the fire. "Too bad we don't have any marshmallows in the house," she says, "I could really go for a S'more."
My phone dings in my coat pocket. "Oh, yeah. I also turned on notifications again. The time for cowering in the shadows is over."
She grabs the phone from my hand. "Better safe than sorry. Let's just fan the flames we can control."
We toss papers for a few minutes, the only sound the popping of the flames and the pinging, every few seconds, of our phones in Andrea's pockets.
"My God, I thought the worst was behind us, but the buzzing never stops," I say. "I don't know how much more of this I can take."
"You never know. It could be for something completely different," Andrea says, but I can tell she's not convinced.
After a symphony of buzzes and bells goes on for what seems like minutes, I stand up and tell her I'll be right back.
I run in the house and grab a cardboard box from the attic. As I head down the deck steps, I see Andrea shove her phone in her coat pocket. "I see we're not heeding our own advice."
"It just wouldn't stop dinging," she says. "And I had to see what it was all about."
"And?"
She frowns and shakes her head. "You're better off not knowing. But I suggest staying off the grid for a little longer."
"Just read a few to give me an idea of how bad things are," I say as I set the box down in front of my chair. "I'd like to know how much longer I'll need to keep my head buried in the sand."
"Okay, but remember, you asked for it."
"I can take it," I say, not quite sure I believe that. "Hit me."
"Let's see if I can find one that's not too mean," she says. "Okay, how about this one? 'Hate has no home here. Die, you scumbag.'"
"That's a mixed message. And that's one of the nicer ones?"
"Afraid so."
"Wait, it's not Aunt Mary again, is it? I don't think I could take that, even if I know it's not really her."
"Nope, it looks like some fake account someone made just to pile on you."
"Maybe this isn't such a good idea. We should get back to feeding the fire."
"Oooh, here's another one," she says, almost giddy. 'His wife's a piece of ass for a broad her age. What does she see in that loser?' Now that was Aunt Mary."
"Are you serious?" This Aunt Mary imposter is a menace, although his assessment of Andrea's physical attributes, while coarse, is definitely spot-on.
"Just kidding." She smiles. "I made the whole thing up."
"I'm glad you find this amusing."
"Just trying to buck up your spirits, babe." She digs her fingers into my deltoid. "Man, you're one huge knot."
"It hasn't exactly been a stress-free week." I roll my shoulders. "That feels good. But let's get back to business."
After we're seated, Andrea asks, "Okay, I'll bite. What's in the box?" She tosses a wadded paper into the fire like a basketball shot. "By the way, we should use this firepit more often."
"Everything up until now has been a prelim. Mere kindling." I pull open the flaps of the box and pull out an ancient 386 laptop. "Now comes the main event."
"What are you talking about?" She's squinting as if she hasn't yet figured out what the laptop has to do with any of this. Then she rummages through the old phones, tablets, and laptops I rescued this morning from their various storage spaces in the house. "Oh, no, no, no, no, no."
"Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. The time has come to rid ourselves of these electronic albatrosses."
"So instead of vowing to never log on when you've had a few beers, your solution is to turn our backyard into a Superfund site by burning a boxful - "
"Boxes. There's two more just like this up in the attic. Plus a few iMacs and monitors that will soon meet a fiery demise."
"I stand corrected. But just so we're clear, your plan to get out of this mess, which you, not the technology, created, your plan is to pollute our backyard with noxious fumes from burning plastic and electronics components."
"I just like the symbolism. Like I'm taking control and the machines won't dictate how I live my life."
"Sounds good. So you won't care if I run inside and throw your new work laptop into the pyre, just to show the man who's really the boss."
"You know if you do that I won't be able to work and I'll get fired."
I toss the dusty laptop. It hits the rim of the pit with a crack and a metallic ping then crashes to the dirt.
"Now that's symbolism."
"I just needed to find my range. The next one should be right in the hole."
"Well, if that's the case." She reaches into her coat pocket. "Let's make your iPhone the first victim."
"Let's not get ahead of ourselves."
"Why not? That's the real cause of your misery. No more drunk posting if you don't have the posting machine in your pocket all the time."
She holds the phone over her head and stares at me. "Do you want to do the honors, or should I?"
"Neither," I say. "You've scared me straight. Now give me my phone."
"Not until you promise me you'll quit blaming the devices for your current woes and will ride this out until it all blows over."
"Fine, you win. I agree. I'll stay off the grid until you give the all clear."
Both our phones start pinging like pinball machines. "Okay, this is too much," she says. "Even I can't take any more joy in watching the world pile on you."
"I really don't have the stomach for more of this, but I need to know what they could possibly still be saying about me. Can you just check one last time? Then I promise I'll quit cold turkey."
She holds my phone up to my face to unlock it. I brace myself for the worst. But she lets out a squeal, the likes of which I have never heard in all our years together.
"What?" I say, unsure if she's setting me up for another gag.
"This is too funny." She throws back her head and laughs, a maniacal cackle that sounds fake. But I know all too well, from many an embarrassing public display of mirth, that once my wife gets on a roll, she has a hard time reining herself in.
"What's too funny?"
"It's too good to be true," she says after finally regaining some semblance of composure. "Just perfect."
Now I'm really worried that she's going to nail me with another zinger, and I'm not sure I can handle that. "Just tell me what it says."
She turns the phone so I can see the TMZ headline. "Kim Kardashian denies any wrong-doing in latest Photoshop controversy."
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"I had a couple of beers, and I was on my phone," I said, not sure what she was getting at. "So I guess I was technically drinking and posting. Why?"
"Read it and weep." She slid her phone toward me on the kitchen counter.
"This might be my finest work yet. Clear, concise, biting but not mean." I tried but failed to fight back a grin.
I had written the post well past midnight, when Andrea was sound asleep, as was everyone else I could think of to text about my amusing observation. So I logged on Facebook for the first time in over a week to let my small coterie of friends in on the fun. Then I drained the last of my beer and headed upstairs to bed.
"Just had to ring in 2022 by being a wiseass?"
"Technically, it was January second," I said, "but that sounds about right."
"Before you scroll to the comments, do me the honor of reading it out loud, so I can get the full sensory experience of having the words wash over me."
"I'm not sure I like where this is going."
"Trust me, it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better." She sipped from her oversized mug and rolled her hand toward me. "Please proceed."
"You want me to read the whole thing?"
"It's short. Quit stalling."
"In due time, woman. You can't rush artistry." I cleared my throat theatrically. "'On My Recent Trouble Focusing.' That's the title."
"I got that. Very clever. Now get on with it."
I cleared my throat again, this time for real. "Okay, here it goes. 'Sorry if I've seemed off lately. I still haven't processed Betty White's death. Taken too soon at ninety-nine. Why couldn't she have held out one more month? Seeing her make it to a hundred would have been special for all of us. It's so unfair! This is the worst year ever!'"
"There's that smile again." She shook her head. "You're really proud of yourself, aren't you?
"What? It's funny. And true."
"I'm glad you think so."
"You don't?"
"Don't give me that puppy dog look." She pulled off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "It's clever. So help me if you smile I will walk out of this room. But I don't think it's a good move to make light of the death of someone who was considered a national treasure."
"I wasn't making fun of her death. You, of all people, should understand that."
"You might know that, and I might know that." She opened up her laptop. "But, wow, the commenters do not feel the same way."
"I haven't looked. And you turned off all my notifications after that Trump post I made last year, remember? So I'm afraid I'll have to be blissfully ignorant."
"Let me see if this will bring you to your senses." She pointed at the screen. "Here's a good one. Short, to the point, representative of the tone of most of the others I saw. 'Why don't you find a bridge and jump off it.' That's by Mary Nunzio."
"Aunt Mary?"
"Wait, you have an Aunt Mary? Do I know her?"
"You never met her," I said. "She's my father's second cousin."
"Family or not. You really pissed her off."
"It doesn't make sense. She's got dementia and has lived in a nursing home for years. I doubt she has access to a computer."
"It doesn't matter if it's Aunt Mary or some pimply-faced teenager living with his parents in a Soviet-era high-rise in Belarus. This is just the tip of the iceberg." She tapped the screen. "People are not being shy about unloading on you."
"I have like a hundred Facebook friends. How many people could have seen it?"
"People are forwarding it to their friends. One guy posted it on Twitter with the hashtag letsganguponthisbettywhitehater."
"One guy with a stupid hashtag. I think I'm safe."
"He's got a million followers. I suggest you delete all your social media accounts ASAP. Those people are out for blood. First it's the comments, then the threats, then the doxxing." She had explained doxxing to me after my Trump post. "Next thing you know, we're receiving suspicious packages with white powder leaking out of the gaps in the cardboard."
"I doubt things will get that bad. It was just a stupid joke about people overreacting, not about Betty White. I'll just take it down."
"It's too late for that. There's a subreddit about it, /r/endbettywhitehate." She snorts as she scrolls on her phone. "Sorry, I shouldn't make light of this. But those creepy incels want your head on a pike."
"How do you know where to find all this?"
"I set a Google alert with your name when I saw the Twitter hashtag. It's blowing up my phone."
"I think the pandemic has changed you," I said. "You were never this plugged in before last year."
"Nowhere to go, nothing to do, nobody to see. I started to find my people online. I told you all about them. You know, the online book clubs, the sourdough groupies."
"I thought you were just sharing your interests, not infiltrating lynch mobs."
"Once you're online," she said, "the whole sordid mess makes itself available."
"You're the one who forced me to get a Facebook account after the pandemic started."
"First of all" - she jabbed the counter with her index finger - "I didn't force you. And second" - another, more forceful jab - "you were constantly asking me for updates about our friends. So I cut out the middleman and set you up."
"And look where it's gotten me."
"So it's my fault."
"You know that's not what I meant." I put my hand on top of hers. "But what do I need to do to make this go away?"
"It'll be over by the end of the day," she said, "or maybe earlier, if some other doofus writes something equally stupid."
I decided to let that pass. "People are saying nasty stuff about me. I'm worried that some idiot is going to take it too far and come after us."
"That might be a bit of an overreaction," she said. "You're not that big of a story. And people will get bored and move on."
"Let's hope so."
"At the very least you should set your Facebook and Twitter accounts to private. And just to be safe, do the same for your LinkedIn. Then batten down the hatches."
"Who are you?"
"This is all basic stuff everyone should know." Her icy blue eyes peered at me over the top of her glasses. "This should be over soon. Then you can live your life again. Just make sure to keep your insults of the dead private."
"It wasn't an... oh, never mind."
That afternoon, my phone buzzed as I was rummaging through the cupboard for a pre-dinner snack. The texter identified herself as a producer for the local public radio station. Would love to have you on to talk about what it's like to be a private citizen who has become the subject of online vitriol.
My first thought was to delete the text, report it as junk, block her number, and crawl into bed. I even went upstairs to lie down, in my clothes, on top of the comforter.
As I stared at the cracked plaster in the ceiling, I thought about how, if I was doomed to be a pariah, I might as well go down swinging. After nearly two years of sitting around while the world fell apart, waiting for the next bad thing to happen, I would finally take action.
"That's not a good idea," Andrea said, when I rushed down to the kitchen to tell her. "You're not cut out for public speaking. Even if you were, you'd only be drawing more attention to yourself, which is the opposite of what you should be doing."
"But I could set the record straight."
"There is no record to set straight." She smashed a clove of garlic with the side of her chef's knife blade. "You need the fire to die out. Doing some stupid radio interview will just keep the embers burning."
"I get what you're saying, but I think I'm going to do it."
"Hey, I know that look. That's your smitten look. Not to be confused with your horny look, which I also know all too well." The corners of her mouth turned up. "No, this is the one you had the night we first met, when it took you the whole night to notice that I was looking over at you."
"I'm not sure I know this look you speak of." I knew the look, but refused to give her the satisfaction of acknowledging it.
"And you still get it when you meet someone you have a thing for, or would if you weren't married to someone so fabulous." She leaned forward to get her nose close to my face. "Yep, there's the telltale flickering in the irises. The dark brown is definitely lighter."
"You're being ridiculous."
"And you're blushing?" She snapped her fingers. "Is this the morning woman who always makes you crack up?"
"Uh, maybe."
"It is!" Her head bobbed several times. "I see what's going on, You've got a little crush on her, maybe more than a little."
"You like her, too."
"She's funny. But I think you're interested in more than her sense of humor."
"Come on. You're being silly."
"The eyes don't lie." She narrowed hers, not taking her gaze off mine. "But crush or not, she's still the enemy when it comes to this story. Stay away. I'm begging you."
"Would it be fair to say, Benjamin, that you did not expect your Facebook post to make you the object of condemnation?"
When the producer called last night, she said I would be interviewed for three minutes during the local segment of Monday's morning show. That would either fly by, I thought, or seem like an eternity. But I told her I would be awaiting her call at five minutes to eight.
"Correct, Monica, I definitely did not expect to become the internet's flavor of the day." Andrea had come up with that phrase during our bedtime brainstorming session. She told me to avoid negativity, to put everything in a positive light.
"If I may ask, why did you make the decision to post something you must have known would be so controversial?"
"Well, Monica." I paused. Andrea was yelling from the kitchen that I could stop repeating her name, that she wasn't into me, that I should get over it and stick to the script. I did my best to ignore her.
"I was merely trying to make a comment," I continued, "on the hysteria surrounding Betty White's death. How people seized that moment, as they always seem to do, to make it about themselves."
"You don't see that overreaction as an understandable part of the grieving process for a beloved public figure?"
"I get that, Monica." I flashed my middle finger toward the kitchen. "But the responses were somewhat hysterical."
"Don't say hysterical," Andrea yelled. "It makes you sound condescending and sexist."
"As I was saying, Monica, I think the responses were meant to draw attention to the people posting them, almost as if Betty White were a mere vessel, into which they could pour all of their pent-up feelings about the troubling state of the world." I came up with that last night, my only contribution that Andrea didn't reject.
I sensed that I was speaking too rapidly. I had banned Andrea from my line of sight during the interview. Now I found myself wanting to see her reaction to how this was going over.
"Let's remember," I said, "that the year started with a riot at the Capitol, and the pandemic continues to plague the world."
"Yes, but - "
"Worst year ever," I added, hastily, "was already a distinct possibility before the death of a ninety-nine-year-old celebrity."
"We're nearing the end of our time, Benjamin. But let me ask you about the reaction your post has been getting. You've been the subject of vitriol on social media, and there's even a subreddit devoted to you. How has that been for you and your family?"
"It's been tough, Monica. My wife and I have been the victims of a smear campaign that's completely disproportionate. And she thinks I'm an idiot for inviting more of that hatred by agreeing to this interview."
"We're glad you decided to join us, Benjamin. But could you elaborate on some of the reactions you've been receiving?"
"I didn't think it was possible for a regular person going about his life to be subjected to this level of public condemnation, Monica. But in the past day I've had a nonstop stream of vulgar insults and threats hurled at me by a bunch of losers who have nothing better to do with their pathetic lives than to find something to feel aggrieved about."
I heard the clatter of ceramic in the kitchen sink and looked over to see Andrea racing into the dining room, shaking her head rapidly and making a throat slashing motion with her right hand. I took that to mean that sticking to the script might have been a better idea.
Monica hustled me off the air after my tirade, thanking me for my candor and wishing me good luck in weathering the storm.
I didn't want to deal with Andrea and the recriminations I would surely be facing for ignoring her advice. I grabbed my coat from the rack and opened the door to immerse myself in the bracing January air.
"You can run but you can't hide." Andrea's voice rang out, penetrating the interior and storm doors as I zipped up my coat on the porch. "Just be careful out there and keep your head down, Public Enemy Number One."
After a cacophony of alerts for incoming texts and phone calls, which I let go directly to voicemail, I turned off my phone to have some peace while I mulled my options for containing this conflagration. In no rush to throw myself back in the cauldron, I stretched my daily three miles to closer to seven.
I eschewed my usual stop at the coffee shop for a latte and buried my chin in my chest whenever I crossed paths with other pedestrians. My photo, taken from my Facebook account, was plastered all over Reddit. I didn't want to take the chance that I would be recognized and confronted. Luckily, the few people I encountered paid me no mind. For the time being, I was only internet infamous.
When I returned home a few minutes after ten, I girded myself for an onslaught from Andrea.
"Hey, babe," she said, from her work station on the sofa. "Did you have a nice walk?"
"Uh, yeah." I stood in the doorway, trying to decipher if her serenity was an act. "Have you been online?"
"Nothing to worry about there. You're yesterday's news. Everyone's moved on to some Kim Kardashian Photoshop controversy."
"Really?" The prospect of this whole affair blowing over was a relief. Completely unexpected, but I wasn't going to complain.
"No, not really." She tossed a throw pillow at me. I let it bounce off my chest. "Congratulations, Ben. Your little radio tantrum has done exactly what I told you it would do. You are now the trending topic on social media. Your phone must be blowing up."
"I turned it off because all the notifications were driving me crazy."
"If you had listened to me yesterday morning, this whole thing might have blown over. But that would have been too easy, and now we're both getting hounded." She played a voicemail from a reporter with the Style section of The Washington Post, who was writing a story about the fiasco. "They tracked me down after you didn't answer their calls while you were on your walkabout."
"But if we don't get back to them -"
"They'll still run the story. If I thought you would follow a script, I'd say we could get you to apologize and promise to do better, let them get a glimpse of our domestic tranquility, and paint you as a victim of a cancel culture run amok, who only wants to get his normal life back. The usual damage control."
"That sounds good. Let's do that."
"Your little radio performance makes me think that's too big a risk."
"So what do we do?"
"We do nothing," she said, raising her voice. "Nothing! Got it?"
"For how long?"
"For as long as it takes for this to die down."
"How long will that be?"
"I don't know, a day or two. I was joking earlier, but something like a Kim Kardashian Photoshop incident will emerge to suck all the oxygen out of the room."
"So until that happens," I said, "I just need to put up with all the mockery and abuse?"
"Yeah, but you should be able to tune out the world. You pretty much do it already. I'm going to try to do the same."
"Sorry for dragging you into this. I should have listened to you about feeding the trolls."
"My dear, you force fed them like they were Muscovy ducks you were trying to fatten up to make troll pâté."
"Except I'm the one getting smeared."
"Good one." She smiled for the first time all morning. "Keep that sense of humor. You're going to need it to survive the next couple of days."
That couple of days stretched until the end of the week. I remained disciplined, and when my willpower faded, Andrea's penetrating gaze would bore a hole in my back whenever she stole upon me hunched over my phone.
But she caught me by surprise on Sunday morning, when I thought I had a few hours alone before she roused herself for the day. My fifteen minutes should have been over, an interminable seven days since I put that target on my back, and I thought there was no harm in taking a peek at the discourse I had inspired.
I had just opened the article in The Onion from Tuesday that Andrea had forbade me to read - the headline, "Area Man Will Insult Your Grandma for Food," immediately told me her instincts were correct - when an abrupt "aha!" sent my coffee cup skittering across the counter.
"What the hell are you doing up so early?" I asked as I mopped up the spill with a paper towel. "And why did you scare the crap out of me like that?"
"I heard you get up and something told me you were up to no good."
"I'm not up to no good. I was just thinking that things have died down and I was curious to see what people have been saying about me."
"Absolutely not! You started this fire, and you need to let it burn until there's not even a molecule of oxygen left to feed it. Things never turn out well for the arsonist who sticks around to watch his handiwork."
"I said I was thinking about it, not that I was going to do it," I lied. "But what you just said has given me a better idea. Meet me out back at high noon. And bring some marshmallows."
"Why the hell did he drag me out here in this cold? And what's this nonsense about marshmallows?" Andrea is talking loud enough for the neighbors on either side of us to hear as she opens the back door. Her tone is the same cocktail of annoyance, wariness, and weariness, tinged with amusement, that has sustained her since I became a pariah.
"What are you doing?" she asks, looking down at me from the deck railing. "And what's with the fire in the middle of the day?"
Her confusion is justifiable. After all, I am sitting on a lawn chair in our anemic backyard, the ubiquitous summertime weeds in remission for the winter, in front of the firepit we haven't used since the early days of the pandemic, when we were desperate for any communal activity that could take place safely outdoors. And I'm flanked on either side by two large tubs that used to hold our kids' toys but are now overflowing with papers.
"Just decluttering." I pull a newspaper section off the top of the pile and toss it in the raging flame. "That's the Post's hatchet job. Yes, I read it. Sue me."
She comes down the steps and approaches gingerly, as if she thinks I might be having a breakdown. I hold out another section of newsprint as an offering. "Come take a turn. I find the crackling when it hits the flame very satisfying."
"I'm sure it is. But why are you doing this?"
"To purge all the negativity that has swirled around me all week. It's an exorcism. "
"You realize that all this stuff is still online, right?" She tosses the Style section into the pit. It crackles and hisses, feeding the orange flame. "That is very satisfying, but it doesn't change anything."
"It makes me feel better. Isn't that enough?"
She reaches into the pile and pulls out a sheaf of printed pages. "What in the actual hell?" She flips through them. "Did you print out the internet?"
"I printed out some of the Reddit and Twitter threads and the Facebook comments under my post."
"You realize that if you printed out everything written about you this week, it would fill up the entire first floor of our house. You're fighting a losing battle."
"I know, but I need to do this. Please join me."
She pulls up a chair and wedges herself between me and one of the tubs. We take turns stoking the fire. "Too bad we don't have any marshmallows in the house," she says, "I could really go for a S'more."
My phone dings in my coat pocket. "Oh, yeah. I also turned on notifications again. The time for cowering in the shadows is over."
She grabs the phone from my hand. "Better safe than sorry. Let's just fan the flames we can control."
We toss papers for a few minutes, the only sound the popping of the flames and the pinging, every few seconds, of our phones in Andrea's pockets.
"My God, I thought the worst was behind us, but the buzzing never stops," I say. "I don't know how much more of this I can take."
"You never know. It could be for something completely different," Andrea says, but I can tell she's not convinced.
After a symphony of buzzes and bells goes on for what seems like minutes, I stand up and tell her I'll be right back.
I run in the house and grab a cardboard box from the attic. As I head down the deck steps, I see Andrea shove her phone in her coat pocket. "I see we're not heeding our own advice."
"It just wouldn't stop dinging," she says. "And I had to see what it was all about."
"And?"
She frowns and shakes her head. "You're better off not knowing. But I suggest staying off the grid for a little longer."
"Just read a few to give me an idea of how bad things are," I say as I set the box down in front of my chair. "I'd like to know how much longer I'll need to keep my head buried in the sand."
"Okay, but remember, you asked for it."
"I can take it," I say, not quite sure I believe that. "Hit me."
"Let's see if I can find one that's not too mean," she says. "Okay, how about this one? 'Hate has no home here. Die, you scumbag.'"
"That's a mixed message. And that's one of the nicer ones?"
"Afraid so."
"Wait, it's not Aunt Mary again, is it? I don't think I could take that, even if I know it's not really her."
"Nope, it looks like some fake account someone made just to pile on you."
"Maybe this isn't such a good idea. We should get back to feeding the fire."
"Oooh, here's another one," she says, almost giddy. 'His wife's a piece of ass for a broad her age. What does she see in that loser?' Now that was Aunt Mary."
"Are you serious?" This Aunt Mary imposter is a menace, although his assessment of Andrea's physical attributes, while coarse, is definitely spot-on.
"Just kidding." She smiles. "I made the whole thing up."
"I'm glad you find this amusing."
"Just trying to buck up your spirits, babe." She digs her fingers into my deltoid. "Man, you're one huge knot."
"It hasn't exactly been a stress-free week." I roll my shoulders. "That feels good. But let's get back to business."
After we're seated, Andrea asks, "Okay, I'll bite. What's in the box?" She tosses a wadded paper into the fire like a basketball shot. "By the way, we should use this firepit more often."
"Everything up until now has been a prelim. Mere kindling." I pull open the flaps of the box and pull out an ancient 386 laptop. "Now comes the main event."
"What are you talking about?" She's squinting as if she hasn't yet figured out what the laptop has to do with any of this. Then she rummages through the old phones, tablets, and laptops I rescued this morning from their various storage spaces in the house. "Oh, no, no, no, no, no."
"Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. The time has come to rid ourselves of these electronic albatrosses."
"So instead of vowing to never log on when you've had a few beers, your solution is to turn our backyard into a Superfund site by burning a boxful - "
"Boxes. There's two more just like this up in the attic. Plus a few iMacs and monitors that will soon meet a fiery demise."
"I stand corrected. But just so we're clear, your plan to get out of this mess, which you, not the technology, created, your plan is to pollute our backyard with noxious fumes from burning plastic and electronics components."
"I just like the symbolism. Like I'm taking control and the machines won't dictate how I live my life."
"Sounds good. So you won't care if I run inside and throw your new work laptop into the pyre, just to show the man who's really the boss."
"You know if you do that I won't be able to work and I'll get fired."
I toss the dusty laptop. It hits the rim of the pit with a crack and a metallic ping then crashes to the dirt.
"Now that's symbolism."
"I just needed to find my range. The next one should be right in the hole."
"Well, if that's the case." She reaches into her coat pocket. "Let's make your iPhone the first victim."
"Let's not get ahead of ourselves."
"Why not? That's the real cause of your misery. No more drunk posting if you don't have the posting machine in your pocket all the time."
She holds the phone over her head and stares at me. "Do you want to do the honors, or should I?"
"Neither," I say. "You've scared me straight. Now give me my phone."
"Not until you promise me you'll quit blaming the devices for your current woes and will ride this out until it all blows over."
"Fine, you win. I agree. I'll stay off the grid until you give the all clear."
Both our phones start pinging like pinball machines. "Okay, this is too much," she says. "Even I can't take any more joy in watching the world pile on you."
"I really don't have the stomach for more of this, but I need to know what they could possibly still be saying about me. Can you just check one last time? Then I promise I'll quit cold turkey."
She holds my phone up to my face to unlock it. I brace myself for the worst. But she lets out a squeal, the likes of which I have never heard in all our years together.
"What?" I say, unsure if she's setting me up for another gag.
"This is too funny." She throws back her head and laughs, a maniacal cackle that sounds fake. But I know all too well, from many an embarrassing public display of mirth, that once my wife gets on a roll, she has a hard time reining herself in.
"What's too funny?"
"It's too good to be true," she says after finally regaining some semblance of composure. "Just perfect."
Now I'm really worried that she's going to nail me with another zinger, and I'm not sure I can handle that. "Just tell me what it says."
She turns the phone so I can see the TMZ headline. "Kim Kardashian denies any wrong-doing in latest Photoshop controversy."
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