POO NEWS: TRUMP ASKED IF I “STILL” STAND WITH HIM. I NEVER STOOD THERE, BUT THANKS FOR THE FREE THERAPY.
Trump’s spam bot asked if I’d “still” stand with him. I never did, but telling that political pile of shit to go f*** itself was cheaper than therapy and almost as satisfying as a good dump.
DR
DrShit ·
POO NEWS: TRUMP ASKED IF I “STILL” STAND WITH HIM. I NEVER STOOD THERE, BUT THANKS FOR THE FREE THERAPY.
Today my phone buzzed with another political text trying very hard to convince me that somebody important had personally stopped whatever he was doing to check on Terry. It opened with, “THIS IS PRESIDENT TRUMP. I need to ask Terry something personal. Will you still stand with me if…” and I immediately got stuck on one word: “still.”
Still? I have never stood with Trump. I never joined the club, bought the hat, boarded the train, drank the Kool-Aid or wandered into the gift shop looking for a commemorative mug. There was no dramatic political breakup where I packed a suitcase, threw my keys on the counter and screamed, “We’re through!” I was never in the relationship. Somehow a computer decided we had history together, which is a bold amount of fiction to squeeze into a spam text.
I knew Donald Trump was almost certainly not sitting somewhere scrolling through his contacts thinking, “I really need to know how Terry feels today.” I knew my name had been dropped into a mass-text template followed by a link and the usual “STOPtoEND” at the bottom. Nothing says, “I need to ask you something personal” quite like an automated unsubscribe instruction.
Still, the message asked me a question, so I answered it.
My response began with, “Oh go f*** off…” and things became considerably less presidential from there. At one point I wrote, “How the f****** dare you waste my f****** time…” before eventually bringing my unsolicited State of the Union address to a close with, “I hope that answers your question you piece of orange s***.”
I believe the technical polling term for that is “leaning no.”
I knew he was probably never going to read it. I was under no illusion that somebody was going to burst through a door holding my text and yell, “Mr. President, stop everything. Terry responded.” My reply probably landed in some automated system that evaluated my carefully crafted political commentary with all the emotional depth of a microwave.
That did not matter because hitting SEND felt fantastic.
These political spam texts have become tiny thieves of my time. My phone is supposed to be where my family, friends, work contacts and actual human beings reach me. Instead, I get fundraising pitches, surveys, petitions, “URGENT” warnings, “FINAL NOTICE” messages and political emergencies apparently scheduled every seventeen minutes.
Every message steals only a little bit of time, which is exactly why nobody thinks about it. I hear the notification, stop what I am doing, look at the phone, unlock it, figure out who is contacting me, read enough to discover it is another political bowel movement, delete it, block it or reply STOP, then try to remember what the hell I was doing before democracy apparently needed another $17.
Five seconds here and ten seconds there do not sound like much until I multiply them by hundreds of texts. Suddenly I have donated something much more valuable than campaign money. I have donated pieces of my life, and unlike the fundraising link, nobody asked whether I wanted to contribute.
There is also a little legal reality underneath all this crap. Being on the National Do Not Call Registry does not automatically make every political message illegal because political communications are treated differently from ordinary commercial telemarketing. Certain automated calls and texts are still regulated under federal law, consent can matter, and there are rules around revoking consent for covered communications. So I am not going to claim every campaign text is automatically an FCC violation just because it irritates me. I can dislike political spam without making up the law to make the story better.
What makes these texts especially ridiculous is the artificial intimacy. “I need to ask Terry something personal.” Really? If this is personal, at least buy me dinner before sending me a donation link. My first name appearing in a database merge does not mean we suddenly have a relationship.
Then there is that magical word, “still,” quietly rewriting my entire political biography. “Will you still stand with me?” suggests I once stood there proudly before some terrible falling-out. I did not. This was basically the political equivalent of receiving a message from someone I never dated asking whether I still love them, except the imaginary ex also wants my credit card information.
I could have replied “STOP.” That would have been efficient, mature and probably far more useful if my only goal was getting off the list. Instead, I chose the emotional premium package.
I started with “Oh go f*** off,” worked my way through “How the f****** dare you waste my f****** time,” and finished with “I hope that answers your question you piece of orange s***.” Somewhere between the first profanity and the last one, something unexpected happened.
I started feeling better.
I knew Trump was not going to read it. I knew I had probably just delivered a passionate political monologue to a server rack. I knew the computer on the other side might interpret twenty lines of rage exactly the same way it interprets “STOP.”
I did not care.
For a few glorious seconds, I got to take every stupid fundraising text, fake emergency, manufactured personal message and interruption that has landed on my phone and send some of that energy back into the electronic sewer from which it came.
It was surprisingly therapeutic.
Some people meditate. Some people journal. Some people pay a therapist $200 an hour to work through their frustrations.
I still recommend therapy.
But I have to admit, typing “you piece of orange s***” and hitting SEND came with a surprisingly satisfying copay.
That is Poo News. Sometimes I report on the crap. Sometimes I step around the crap. Today the crap texted me directly, and for about thirty seconds, replying to it was cheaper than therapy.
Today my phone buzzed with another political text trying very hard to convince me that somebody important had personally stopped whatever he was doing to check on Terry. It opened with, “THIS IS PRESIDENT TRUMP. I need to ask Terry something personal. Will you still stand with me if…” and I immediately got stuck on one word: “still.”
Still? I have never stood with Trump. I never joined the club, bought the hat, boarded the train, drank the Kool-Aid or wandered into the gift shop looking for a commemorative mug. There was no dramatic political breakup where I packed a suitcase, threw my keys on the counter and screamed, “We’re through!” I was never in the relationship. Somehow a computer decided we had history together, which is a bold amount of fiction to squeeze into a spam text.
I knew Donald Trump was almost certainly not sitting somewhere scrolling through his contacts thinking, “I really need to know how Terry feels today.” I knew my name had been dropped into a mass-text template followed by a link and the usual “STOPtoEND” at the bottom. Nothing says, “I need to ask you something personal” quite like an automated unsubscribe instruction.
Still, the message asked me a question, so I answered it.
My response began with, “Oh go f*** off…” and things became considerably less presidential from there. At one point I wrote, “How the f****** dare you waste my f****** time…” before eventually bringing my unsolicited State of the Union address to a close with, “I hope that answers your question you piece of orange s***.”
I believe the technical polling term for that is “leaning no.”
I knew he was probably never going to read it. I was under no illusion that somebody was going to burst through a door holding my text and yell, “Mr. President, stop everything. Terry responded.” My reply probably landed in some automated system that evaluated my carefully crafted political commentary with all the emotional depth of a microwave.
That did not matter because hitting SEND felt fantastic.
These political spam texts have become tiny thieves of my time. My phone is supposed to be where my family, friends, work contacts and actual human beings reach me. Instead, I get fundraising pitches, surveys, petitions, “URGENT” warnings, “FINAL NOTICE” messages and political emergencies apparently scheduled every seventeen minutes.
Every message steals only a little bit of time, which is exactly why nobody thinks about it. I hear the notification, stop what I am doing, look at the phone, unlock it, figure out who is contacting me, read enough to discover it is another political bowel movement, delete it, block it or reply STOP, then try to remember what the hell I was doing before democracy apparently needed another $17.
Five seconds here and ten seconds there do not sound like much until I multiply them by hundreds of texts. Suddenly I have donated something much more valuable than campaign money. I have donated pieces of my life, and unlike the fundraising link, nobody asked whether I wanted to contribute.
There is also a little legal reality underneath all this crap. Being on the National Do Not Call Registry does not automatically make every political message illegal because political communications are treated differently from ordinary commercial telemarketing. Certain automated calls and texts are still regulated under federal law, consent can matter, and there are rules around revoking consent for covered communications. So I am not going to claim every campaign text is automatically an FCC violation just because it irritates me. I can dislike political spam without making up the law to make the story better.
What makes these texts especially ridiculous is the artificial intimacy. “I need to ask Terry something personal.” Really? If this is personal, at least buy me dinner before sending me a donation link. My first name appearing in a database merge does not mean we suddenly have a relationship.
Then there is that magical word, “still,” quietly rewriting my entire political biography. “Will you still stand with me?” suggests I once stood there proudly before some terrible falling-out. I did not. This was basically the political equivalent of receiving a message from someone I never dated asking whether I still love them, except the imaginary ex also wants my credit card information.
I could have replied “STOP.” That would have been efficient, mature and probably far more useful if my only goal was getting off the list. Instead, I chose the emotional premium package.
I started with “Oh go f*** off,” worked my way through “How the f****** dare you waste my f****** time,” and finished with “I hope that answers your question you piece of orange s***.” Somewhere between the first profanity and the last one, something unexpected happened.
I started feeling better.
I knew Trump was not going to read it. I knew I had probably just delivered a passionate political monologue to a server rack. I knew the computer on the other side might interpret twenty lines of rage exactly the same way it interprets “STOP.”
I did not care.
For a few glorious seconds, I got to take every stupid fundraising text, fake emergency, manufactured personal message and interruption that has landed on my phone and send some of that energy back into the electronic sewer from which it came.
It was surprisingly therapeutic.
Some people meditate. Some people journal. Some people pay a therapist $200 an hour to work through their frustrations.
I still recommend therapy.
But I have to admit, typing “you piece of orange s***” and hitting SEND came with a surprisingly satisfying copay.
That is Poo News. Sometimes I report on the crap. Sometimes I step around the crap. Today the crap texted me directly, and for about thirty seconds, replying to it was cheaper than therapy.