I Was A Professional Internet Troll

I enjoy tormenting people over the Internet. However, that time has now come to an end.

I’m writing this as a final confession and testament to what I have accomplished.

Yes, I live in my mother’s house. I never have been kissed; I never have had a girlfriend. I’ve had sex, but not for free. I know. I’m gross.

In fact, I can describe myself perfectly using a few quotes from my favorite book: ”the Demonologist.”

In the book, Ed Warren (the real life demonologist from “the conjuring” movies) is speaking with a demon to find out more about its condition.


 * Ed Warren: Describe yourself to me.

The Voice: No.

(The crucifix is then set in place, followed by agonized screaming by the possessing spirit.)

Ed Warren: Describe yourself to me!

The Voice: I must in truth tell you what I look like. I am wicked-and ugly looking. I am inhuman. I am vindictive. I have a horrible face. I have much gross hair on my body. My eyes are deepsunk. I am black all over. I am burnt. I grow hair. My nails are long, my toes are clawed. I have a tail. I use a spear. What else do you want to know?

Ed Warren: What do you call yourself?

The Voice: (Proclaiming) I am Resisilobus! I am Resisilobus!!*

(The Demonologist: The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren, by Gerald Daniel Brittle, iUniverse Press, 2002 softcover reprint edition, ISBN 0-595-24618-4, page 100, paragraphs 2,)

That’s where I took my name. Resisilobus.

It’s difficult to spell and possibly not real: the perfect name for an Internet troll. Besides, any time it’s spoken aloud it technically credits a demon, which brings me joy, knowing any Christians that I taunt will have to repeat it.

Granted, I don’t have a tail and the layer of filth coating my body is more oily grey than black, but most of that description is apt. (I have a spear I practice with in my room.)

I know my condition is bad. I know it isn’t healthy, sitting in front of the computer eating only what the gas station at the end of the block carries. I know I’m not “normal.”

I live in a small trailer park where my mother and I have lived my entire life. I didn’t have a father, which is good as it allowed me to be the man of my own kingdom. My mom and I were doing fine. She worked full time at the local supermarket and I spend my days doing work via “work from home” jobs. With our combined, menial incomes, we can afford a nice plot away from most of the other trailers and mobile houses.

I lived through childhood and adolescence trying to remain hidden. Obviously, no one can stay hidden. I was bullied and aggressed by countless peers growing up. I had little to no real friendships and every girl I ever encountered was repulsed by me. I was indeed, born an outcast.

I accepted this fate very early on and allowed myself to adapt. I would make these people pay... somehow.

I think that’s where my fascination with demons started. My mom was an old time, conservative Bible thumper and as such, I went to church every Sunday until I turned 18. On my eighteenth she told me to do what I wanted. However, It wasn’t all bad. I enjoyed learning about demons and the devil and hell. It was cool and scary. I felt a common spirit with them:

“If you live every day already defeated, your only joy is bringing others down with you.”

My first thought was the obvious: just shoot up the place.

However, I soon realized that, while effective, bullets only kill. Suffering from a gun is very... singular.

I wanted the bullets to fly mind you, but not from my hand.

As I aged I grew to understand the Internet. As I grew, so did it. By the time I was 20 it was a central part of every day life and social media was booming.

This is where I first discovered my talents.

I created a profile for myself with very.... lackluster results. I had no friends and within a week I deleted it. However, while I failed at social media, I visited forums and realized that anonymity could be utilized in mainstream social media for my own purposes.

It started with Cat-fishing (before this was even a term). I created fake profiles with handsome men and women by stealing pictures from non-private profiles. It was almost too easy. I would add the former students from my high school with no trouble. They accepted without question... a kindness they would never allow the real me.

From there, I would strike up conversation. It is incredible how appearance can affect people’s demeanors. When I would chat as myself in real life I would be vastly ignored. However, when I created these profiles of beautiful people, I was like a god.

I talked men into flying across the country only to find no beautiful, young woman waiting for them, but instead an empty space in the crowd where their non-existent lover should be standing. I convinced women to leave their fiancés and boyfriends only for a profile that disappeared the following day, leaving them to pick up the pieces of a broken life. It was glorious.

Again, this was before the days of basic Internet safety and common sense. These people were gullible, because the concept of deception via social media was unheard of.

However, deceiving people into travelling miles or leaving their loved ones was but a trial and training period for the bloodshed to come.

I started real mischief with other deplorable basement dwellers. I helped with hundreds of other people posting awful graphic content to harmless and often family oriented, sections of the web. People claiming their lives were ruined. Others simply expressed extreme outrage. Either was funny enough.

Internet celebrities who had their personal info leaked was another blast. Really fun to see famous people scared once in a while. We had people showing up at all hours and banging on the windows. Others made scary, anonymous calls in the middle of the night threatening them and their loved ones. We had a time, but I was also learning the subtle ins and outs of being an Internet troll.

Now, I don’t feel one can really call himself or herself a true Internet troll, without causing a person to end their miserable life.

The first suicide I participated in was a group effort. A young lady had her information as well as several... embarrassing photographs leaked via a fake profile. From there, it was unbelievably simple.

Just send the images to her friends and family and school.

It may sound cliché to say, but it was all too easy.

She was at her house after school around 3:30 when it all happened. Once it reached the entire school, her parents were included. They immediately rushed home from work, but despite their best efforts, they were too late. They found her in the bathtub with her dad’s box-cutter.

That was the first time I felt true power. Causing someone to jump off the metaphorical cliff. It was a rush that is like none other. I had snuffed out a life from hundreds of miles away.

Now, teenage girls were common and easy. I wanted a real challenge: someone who was older and wiser. I wanted to suicide someone who would be a real tragedy.

I chose a kind, old widower in my mother’s Bible study group. I found his humble social media page that I assume his kids set up for him, and began to learn about him. Again, from there it was all too easy.

I began sending him emails with threats made out to his family if he didn’t comply. I sent horrid images and links and videos. I called his home at all hours. I found his email and his family’s emails. He only caused me a challenge when he deleted his Internet presence after begging me to stop and rebuking me using the Bible.

In the end it was when I began mailing edited pictures of his children and grandchildren...

I already told you I’m not a good person.

I am Resisilobus.

And in that moment... I was victorious.

He hung himself with a note about the evils of people that he could not comprehend, how he couldn’t take this world any longer. I know this because of my distraught mother and her grieving phone calls to the fellow mourning members of her study group.

I laughed, and I laughed, and I laughed for days, but this was not the pinnacle of my torments.

No, not by a long shot.

One of the crowning achievements I claim is influencing a school shooting. This one took a little effort, but the payload was, bar none, the most satisfying.

Picking the perfect candidate always came down to one thing: setting. If they had a bad life (or at least think they do) they are more susceptible to do badly to others. I found a young man who was already showing signs of serious anger issues and aggression problems. His name was Michael. I created several fake profiles to befriend him and create relationships. I found the website where he posted his secret drawings and his blog about hating the world.

It was much like watering a plant. It took tender love and care, and lots and lots of time, but the day finally did come.

I had used fake profiles to complement his writing and drawing and that he should just shoot all of the “stuck-up pigs” (his words). Over time he began to listen.

The day came and he sent a few of the profiles a link to his long, ranting goodbye post on his blog.

I skimmed it with my smile widening. I had done it.

That day, seven teenagers met with his wrath. Then, after the cops had the place surrounded, he took himself out.

I’m not really sure how he pulled it off. He was in a pretty strict section of the country, but he found a way. He was an eager little beaver. I streamed his local news channel the entire time. I had a bottle of chardonnay to celebrate. I had truly done it. I had truly become the devil on the shoulder.

However, the bullet-ridden corpses of a few teenagers weren’t quite my pinnacle achievement. No, I take the most pride in a hack I once pulled off on a popular Bible application.

The application was widely used on phones and it had a website version as well. In it I changed several verses slightly. Some, I changed grossly, but most I just shifted around to mean something a little different.

Why does this matter? Well, for centuries until the moveable type printing press, the Bible was copied by hand via scribe. They would slowly and painstakingly copy page after page of scripture and if they made a mistake, they would shred that page and start anew.

I was utterly assuring its undoing. What’s better was all the subtle places I snuck my username: “Resisilobus”

This resulting in a panic once it had been uncovered. The app I hacked also influenced several other apps and sites using its search engine. People were now second guessing everything they had ever read in the Bible and having to relearn scripture. Leaders of churches came under fire for not recognizing the issue and preaching from the app anyways. Several news groups did stories and articles on the great deception and the unknown hacker who pulled off the stunt. People’s lives were now upside down. They had fallen for the lies of a false prophet and they were fundamentally fractured because of it.

So much turmoil. It was my crowning achievement.

However, the reason I write this now is because of my current situation.

My mother died last week of a heart attack. Her funeral was small and humble, just as she would have wanted it. None of her friends who were there from church and sowing circle and her book club even acknowledged me. I think on some level they blamed me. I was her embarrassing secret after all: the pitiful man-child who never left home.

Now, I didn’t realize it while she was alive, but she had a decent life insurance policy. Enough to keep me set in the trailer for years. However, I fear I won’t be around much longer to enjoy it.

A few days after the funeral I heard a knock outside my door. I opened to an empty front step and a dull purple dusk creeping over the horizon. I saw something on the ground, a faded and torn piece of paper. On it was scratched only two words:

“Found you.”

I write this now because it has been three days since that night. I am running out of food in the house fast and I live too far out in the county for delivery drivers. I am locked in my room with the windows drawn. I can hear knocking all over the windows and doors and walls at all hours of the day and night. I dare not even leave my seat anymore.

I fear for my life.

Apparently my mom did more than I gave her credit for. Apparently she was like a ward for evil coming at me.

Do you know what power a name holds?

Resisilobus

Do you know what invoking something entails?

Resisilobus.

Every time someone read it aloud.

Resisilobus.

Every time I posted terrible jokes on a memorial pages.

Resislobus.

Thousands of people seeing it.

Resisilobus

Every time I bombarded innocent eyes with violent imagery

Resisilobus.

A name is a powerful thing.

A truly powerful thing.

Christians and spiritualists believe I have wrought the evil upon myself by first calling upon the name. Chaos magicians would say that many people speaking the being’s name brought that being into existence through combined psychic energy. Neither one of these options were preferable.

I can hear it stalking around outside. My doors and windows are covered and tightly sealed shut and locked. I have lines of salt along the bottom of the windowsills and doorways, but don’t know how long it will all hold. It longs to get in.

It wants to kill the imposter.

I’ve seen it a few times.

The first was the second time I heard a knock on the door. I looked out the crack in my blinds into the pitch black of my front yard. The lights from inside my house cast its silhouette in front of the door.

This was how I knew it wasn’t human. The arms were too long. The spine was impossibly hunched and broken, but even still it towered taller than most men. Its head was misshaped and gnarled, and its grin was obvious, even in the dark.

It has spoken to me before. It beckons me to open the door. It whispers into my window as I type these words.

“Come Out”

Maybe my loving mother’s positivity was my only thing protecting me. Her desire to protect her only offspring was the only thing actually protecting the offspring. Now, I sit, completely alone waiting for this being to finally decide to enter.

I know it can come in at any time. I already invited it in when I first invoked its name.

“Resisilobus”

It just wants to toy with me. It stands outside now. Wearing me down first with hunger. Then it will continue with taunting me with its horrid, gasping voice.

I only fear for when it does finally decide to come in. It will do things to me that I dare not comprehend. It will use its razor edged claws to drag me to a place I did not think existed.

I will die soon.

I will die in the worst possible pain.

The greater tormentor will soon consume me.

The superior being will win out.

I don’t ask for sympathy, but I do ask one thing:

Just remember, that for a brief time,

I was the better devil.