Troll Farm

The hot clack of key strokes drowned out the overhead fan. I felt sweaty and overstimulated from an eight-hour shift of shit posts and conspiracies, and my queue was already overfull with posts—

Our overlords do NOT care about human decency— free yourself and become a REAL PERSON— Dick Medley wants u to be a wage slave indentured to the Corporate States of America.

The long tables made it easy to get lost in the crowd. Fifty young people, leaning forward over keyboards, glowing with monitor feedback. I craned my neck and saw bossman sitting in his little cubicle, short dark hair, trim little mustache, baggy clothes that looked like they were off the table at Sam’s Club, idly flipping at his phone and occasionally looking up to make sure we were all actively engaged and typing. There were four rows in all, with little work stations packed as closed together as possible. I guessed eighty of us were crammed in a room with a water-stained drop ceiling and a carpet that smelled like mold.

Dick Medley sacrifices children to a devil cult and harvests their blood for adrenochrome. Have u seen the videos?? Click here to watch>>

I got paid per post with a bonus for engagements. Shifts were fluid—I came and went more or less at will, but found myself sitting in the same chair most nights, because the money was good, and because she was there, sitting across from me. Short, dark brown hair cut at a slant at her chin, full pink lips, light brown skin with a rose undertone, wide green eyes, and this cute, round, crooked nose. She barely ever looked up from her screen, only typed, posted, typed some more.

PATRIOTS! The Deep State will not let their Chosen One lose. The Future of our Democracy is at stake!!! Dick Medley WILL steal this Election if you LET HIM.

I didn’t know who funded the place. I never thought to ask—each night, when I decided to head home bleary-eyed and still buzzed on ancient cases of discontinued Bawls energy drinks, bossman would count out cash and slap it down in my palm with a little grin. “Don’t spend it all in one place, kid,” he said, every single time, like it was a good running joke. I spent it on my mom, who was going through chemo, and my sister, who needed help with her math homework if she was going to graduate from high school, and we couldn’t afford a tutor unless I went viral.

Which SIDE are you on? The BLACK HATS? The DEEP STATE? DICK MEDLEY? Or the side of the light??

The girl sat across from me most nights. She was too pretty to work in a troll farm, but she never spoke to anyone, and her fingers rarely moved from the keyboard, rattling off propaganda with a casual intensity. Her eyes stayed focused, while mine strayed up to her lips, and lingered on her hands, and the long curve of her neck, and the hollow of her throat. I didn’t know her name. We didn’t use names—it was against the rules. But I saw her some evenings as I peeled myself from my station and wandered back toward home, moon high and fat, standing outside smoking cigarettes wrapped in a black zip-up sweatshirt, her arms hugging herself against the cold.

Click Here to expose the MADNESS of the deep STATE and their Chosen Satanic One Dick Medley as he swallows the ADRENOCHROME of small murdered babies!!!

I couldn’t stop thinking about her, even when cleaning my mother’s laundry or cooking her breakfast or trying to help tutor my sister even though I wasn’t so good with numbers. The girl was always there, floating just out of reach. I tried to get her attention by tapping my finger on the table between our monitors, but that didn’t work. I tried leaning to the side far enough to see around the screens, but that only made her lips tug down into an annoyed frown, and the bossman shouted at me once to keep posting. I tried reaching my toe out to brush against her own pair of scuffed Keds but either my legs weren’t long enough, or she kept herself folded up like a lioness in repose.

PATRIOTS over the last 24hrs over 300 children have been TAKEN from their HOMES under the watch of Dick Medley and all 300 children will remain missing if you do not STAND UP against pedophilia and hate!!!!

Then one night, I stepped out into the cold, and there she was, lips making a thick gray bloom of smoke. The parking lot was empty, the freeway nearby quiet save for the occasional rumble of a long-haul truck, and I had a twenty-minute walk home through dodgy neighborhoods with boarded up homes, and the last thing I wanted to do was leave, not with so much rattling around my brain.

“You want one?” she asked, frowning at me over her fingers.

I didn’t smoke. “Sure,” I said, accepted the cigarette, and proceeded to suck down nauseating ash.

“Hot in there,” she said, rubbing the toe of her shoe against the ground. I noticed a little birthmark behind her ear. I leaned against the wall next to her, closer than was appropriate, but she didn’t pull away.

“It’s a lot of work,” I said, flicking the cigarette with my thumb.

“Pays good though,” she said.

She was right. I made more in there than I’d make anywhere else. Idiot kid like me with no skills and no real education had no chance otherwise. “I like working with computers,” I said, and felt like an idiot.

But she smiled and nodded. “Me too. I feel sort of, like, powerful, you know? Especially when an account goes viral. I got one, a viral account. Thirty thousand followers.”

My best account had five thousand at most. “That’s amazing,” I said.

“I got lucky, had a couple good posts in a row, and it just took off from there. I focus on that account mostly now.” She chewed on her lip. “I’m afraid it’ll get banned.”

“Just don’t use the keywords,” I said, which was bland and stupid, since everyone knew which words and phrases to avoid in order to make sure our best accounts weren’t flagged.

She looked at me from underneath her bangs and her big round eyes glistened, and I dropped the half-smoked cigarette into a puddle at my feet. The fire went out with a hiss. “My name’s Melanie,” she said. “People call me Mel.”

“Arnie,” I said, faster than I should have.

Her smile lit up. “You’re the first one that’s talked to me, you know? Everyone else? They’re kind of weird.”

“Yeah, totally,” I said. “Hey, uh, are you staying late? I got to get home.”

“I’ll be here tomorrow,” she said with a shrug. “Always am.”

I pushed off the wall and forced myself to head back. My mom would need my help in the morning, and if I hurried, I’d still be able to get a few hours of sleep. I felt Mel’s eyes on me, and I wondered if I’d made a mistake, giving her my real name, or if I even cared about that anymore.

HE is coming back to take COMMAND when the indictments come down. U Know who HE is!! The STORM is coming!!

She was there the next night and this time when I reached out my foot to touch her foot she didn’t dance away. My shoe rubbed against her instep and she smiled at me around the monitor until bossman yelled and made us get back to work. I posted and typed and even though my heart wasn’t in it, even though I was beginning to feel sick by all the reactions, all the positive reinforcement, all the people falling for my absurd and disgusting deceptions, I still couldn’t bring myself to stop. The room was a murky box of strangers building political narratives that would reverberate through the world like tiny waves, and all I could do was watch her, and tap out love notes with my fingertips.

Freedom of Movement is the ONLY Freedom of Mankind! Cast off the SHACKLES of corporations!! You ARE NOT a company!!

 I found her outside again, this time crouched down and huddled around a phone. She stood and smiled when I sat down next to her, my back against the hard stone of the blank office complex. “Why do you do this, anyway?” she asked, head tilted, almost leaning against my shoulder.

I spilled my guts—about my sick mother, about my borderline failing sister, about my own inadequacies and inability to get into college. She listened and beamed at me with big white teeth and small red receding gums.

“It’s a rush though, right?” she asked. “I mean, when you get something to land.”

“Definitely,” I said, thinking back to all those likes and shares racking up. “And the money helps.”

“It feels good, like I’m finally being seen,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said, “and I don’t even know if I believe any of this stuff. Like I didn’t know who Dick Medley was before I came here.” She looked at me through her eyelashes and I tumbled forward, unable to stop myself. “Honestly, some of the posts are sort of crazy and gross, right? But like, when the shares start, it’s so addictive. And the money’s really helping my family. I mean, it might keep my mom alive, you know?”

“Totally,” she said, speaking slowly. “You do know who Dick Medley is now, right? I mean, he’s the Anti-Christ.”

I laughed and she touched my knee before she stood up and fished a cigarette from her pocket. I climbed to my feet and wished she wouldn’t smoke, or at least wished she’d wait until I was gone, but if I was going to love her I had to accept her for what she was. I waved once and she waved back, breathing the smoke deep, as I headed back for home, thinking about her lips and her tongue, and the way she laughed, and the passion in her voice when she spoke about going viral. It was like a religion, like a plague, and she wanted more of it—and I wanted more, too.

WATCH: Radicals Funded by Dick Medley Kidnap True Patriots Off The Street And TORTURE Them For Being Real Americans

In the room the next day the bossman caught my eye half way through my shift after a few posts fell flat and didn’t catch tractions. I shuffled into his office, head still buzzing with a fresh caffeine hit. If I could get an account with thirty thousand follows, then maybe I’d be more like Mel, and we could go out to dinner one night after work, and maybe I’d hold her hand, and kiss her chastely on the lips in the parking lot, and she’d gush about how patient I am with my mother and my sister, and touch my arm and squeeze the muscle and look impressed at my strength, and she’d come home with me and eat breakfast in the kitchen in the morning, looking radiant and healthy and right.

“I got bad news,” bossman said as I sat down on the stool across from his desk. His office door slid shut and the sound of typing and whirring computer fans disappeared.

“What happened?” I asked. “Did one of my accounts get banned?” I’d never been called in to see bossman before, except to get paid.

“Something like that,” he said, squinting at me. “You been talking to that girl, right?”

I looked back at him, startled. “Uh, I don’t know what you mean.”

He seemed genuinely sad. “Melanie,” he said. “She told you her name’s Melanie, and you told her your real name. You did that, right?”

I opened my mouth to argue. My pits began to leak sweat and my hands shook. I knew I messed up, so I nodded real slow. “Yeah, I did.”

“Shit, kid,” bossman said, rubbing at his face. “I’m sorry. I got to let you go.”

“Wait,” I said, moving to rise from my stool, but bossman held up a hand, and I sank back down. “I’m not— I need this job,” I said, pleading, thinking of my mom and my sister. “Please, don’t fire me. She started it.”

“Probably,” he said, shrugging. “But she’s my best poster, and you’re in the middle of the pack. I got to let you go. I said when you started, no fraternizing, no names.”

“Please,” I said, feeling horrible and pathetic, my world crushing into a single point in space.

“I asked her why she came to me,” he said. “Do you know what she said? She said you’re not a real believer. She said you don’t care about the cause.” He laughed, shaking his head. “I don’t give a shit about that, kid, but that girl, man, she’s deep in it.” He sighed and ran a hand through his thinning hair. “Really kid, hate to do it, but you broke the rules, and now you got to go.”

I stood in a stunned haze and staggered toward the door and he followed me, and before I could step back out onto the floor he shoved some cash into my hand—“This is what I owe you,” he muttered—and he slammed the office door as I left.

The room was a drone. Nobody looked up when I walked to my station and gathered my jacket. Her eyes remained locked on the screen. I stood and stared at her, and wanted to say, my mother might die because of this, my sister’s life could be ruined, and now I’ll have nothing, nothing, and for what, for Dick Medley? Dick Medley? I don’t even know who Dick Medley is, and would you look at me, please, you monster?

But I said nothing. She never looked up. I walked away and stepped out into the cold, sucking it into my throat like fire, like smoke.

ps, Slightly longer than normal this week, and a little strange, but a fun piece to write. Hope you enjoyed it! Share and like and comment! Have a good week. - DC