Jane Austen in the DMs; Or, Merrily Confusing Weird Guys on the Internet
A saga of love, loss, and loquacious buffoonery between strangers. Comeuppance for obnoxious Twitter menfolk, if you will.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that dudes be weird on the Internet.
Most women with any kind of public social media presence — particularly one connected in any way with the creative arts — will attest to a quantity of unsolicited missives in their Direct Message Requests folder. Some of these are harmless. Some require instant blocking. And some, it turns out, are perfect targets for harmless bedevilment.
I mean, any gentleman who ignores a lady’s initial rebuff is just asking for it, wouldn’t you say?
I first began replying impishly to these messages last December. We’ve all seen the viral screenshots of women replying to truly nasty messages by telling the perpetrators that their mothers have been informed of their nefarious behavior, yes? I have not the patience for tracking down respectable middle-aged women on Facebook and confronting them with the reprehensible digital correspondence of their offspring, but I do have a rather robust knowledge of Jane Austen’s six classic novels. What kind of fun might be had by replying to…
