by Adrian Daniel Schramm | Feb 2, 2017 | Fiction
She was known around the neighborhood. We called her Rusty because there was a rumor going around, probably started by one of the kids who didn’t know anyway, that the hair between her legs was the red color of rust and aren’t the neighborhood kids so funny? I didn’t know really what she did. I asked my older brother why no one in the neighborhood would talk to her, only cars from the other side of Empire Street. He laughed and he slapped me upside the head and told me not to be an idiot. “You know what she does,” he said. “I don’t.” My brother stared at me. He said, “She has sex for money. She’s a prostitute. You think she is standing outside at the end of the block for what? She waits, they come. They pay.” As far as I knew paying for sex was something that only happened in movies and it made me feel some strange kind of way in my stomach I can’t describe. Who comes and who pays? Teachers at school maybe. Or the people I see on television. My brother shook his head. “It’s no one we know,” he said. “Guys who come up from the sewer.” I was 10 years old and only starting to understand how the world works. I went one Saturday afternoon after a bad rainstorm and asked her about it. I was a scrawny kid with glasses and probably not at all threatening and she looked down at me with a crooked smile and patted my head with her hand. Her nails were long, too long I thought,...
by Adrian Daniel Schramm | Feb 1, 2017 | Nonfiction
People seem to think they’re sparking some sort of revolution by trolling; people who adhere to Milo Yiannoupolouos’ idea that trolls are the “only people that tell the the truth these days,” or believe that trolling is an art. But you’ve got Time Magazine complaining how trolls are ruining the internet. And there’s even a book out on the subject: This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things. It’s just another tactic to try and exhibit power on the internet. Everyone is doing it now. And very poorly, usually. And, more importantly, as a result the average person is now less willing or able to be trolled. It’s lame. You’re a lame duck if you do it. Like the kid who thinks it’s still cool to pull on girls’ pigtails. Outdated. You and every other twelve year old can try and rile people up online. Lulz. But anyone with half a brain; anyone who knows two things about where the world is headed no longer falls for childish trickery. But that’s not the whole story. And it certainly doesn’t stop there. A trolling era: What now? So where do the 4chan, 8chan, Breitbart trolls go when their caves have been raided? Where can they find darkness after being brought out into the light? To be fair, trolls are often nonpartisan. Like “Thor83” played by Patton Oswalt (amen.) trolling party invites in this Portlandia sketch. But of course, when it’s not messing with people’s lives, it’s not really worth writing about or reporting on. So, especially on the sites just mentioned, the loudest and most obvious trolls, like Milo, have taken to...
