Personal - Taming a Troll

I don't normally write personal anecdotal journals. Meh. I really want to shout this somewhere. dA just happens to be my target.

So I'm with real internet right now! What do I do? Go play with real people on Animal Crossing. I can be social! I hop on the boat to the island with to play alongside random people I don't know, because why the heck not? First night: Night of February 20th.

First few visits ranged in enjoyment, but one really stood out. I was alone for a bit; had cleared the island to catch some valuable bugs. New person arrives. Some princess with a crown. Not gonna judge. Just continued my hunting.

She comes along and sees me, then asks "Aren't you supposed to be a guy?". This due to in-game me being male yet I have female hair.

I laughed, and explained. Yes, my character is a guy. I like the particular eyes from the male character better (pretty much the only thing you can't change later) and how Kapp'n speaks to you when you male (namely, he doesn't flirt with guys). She then proceeded to flip out and start calling me a lesbian and stuff. I didn't really reply, just went on about my business.

She then tells me to leave. Note she wasn't exactly polite, she was being as rude as she could. I said I'd been there for a while, and she tries arguing " no u just got here". I pointed out "Who do you think picked the flowers, cut down the trees, and dug up the bushes?" Reply: "You did that, [insult]!"

Was she implying that I was accusing her of that? Well, I replied with a simple "Duh." And continued collecting beetles.

She seemed to catch on then, and still trying to get me to leave, started running around the island to scare them off. Well, I had no intentions of leaving, so I put on a diving suit and just swam around. No problem. Underwater stuff doesn't sell half as well, but it still sells. She continues insults and bragging about scaring off one of the most valuable beetles.

At this point, I'm thoroughly amused. I don't hide this, and mention how I've never played with a troll before and that it was kinda fun. I wasn't lying. The Club Tortimer island is inconsequential to anyone's game, so she couldn't exactly destroy my town or anything. It was funny how hard she was trying to piss me off. She started asking my age, took a few tries to get an answer as I was on a slightly different subject of being amused and how I don't tend to piss people off so this was a first for me.

When I did answer, she tried switching gears and telling me that I was just jealous because she was the one wearing the crown. To explain a bit for non AC players: there's a little crown that costs a bit over one million bells (the in-game currency). This absurdly priced item is the most expensive in the game, save for a completely upgraded house which is upgraded in pieces anyway. For that price, you could easily buy two to four expansions on you house. So wearing a crown is basically shorthand for "I'm rich".

Well, I don't give two figs about the crown, otherwise I'd have grinded the bells and bought one. But I took the  opportunity to just converse and ask what her bell-earning methods were.

She seemed to mellow out a bit here. Said she sold fruit and it only took two days. That sounds rather unbelievable. Even with  foreign fruit selling at 500 bells per, that would take a lot of trees since it takes three days for fruit to regrow, and one harvest only nets you 1,500. Maybe 4,500 now that I think about it, if selling for premium. I think that triples the price.Still, that would take a LOT of trees. I even asked if she was using perfect fruit (600 a piece, a lot more in a town where it's foreign perfect fruit), and she said no, her tree died. I didn't say it was hard to believe she got 1mil off of normal trees like that in two days, but I did mention that "You have to replant those, silly!" about the perfect fruit tree.

Apparently, she took offense that, saying "I'm against the word silly". I don't know if that was bait and she was trying to get me to say it over and over or something, but I just said OK and just didn't say silly.

And that's when she changed. Instead of throwing insults and trying to convince me off the island like before, she opened up and said that the last two days were the worst. Being the listener I am, I asked what happened. She completely opened up about how she had just dumped her boyfriend for no reason, how he had lied to her, how her friend had her secret crush exposed and the crush rejected and made fun of her. I continued bug-hunting (she had stopped running around the island) and letting her let it out. At the end, she said she had homework to do and (!) apologized for being mean earlier, saying that she does that to people she doesn't like. I told her no worries, and the visit ended with her leaving hopefully feeling better.

My takeaway here? People being mean for no reason probably are having a hard time after all, and just letting them do as they please without giving them the response they're looking for really can make them stop. Maybe they need someone calm enough to listen.

Also, I'm troll-proof on that island. Boo-yah.