Matthew Trenda
Appearances
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Beef
That afternoon in 2008, I found myself staring at my laptop screen, reading an email informing me that I had been banned permanently from the book website Shelfari, which was a competitor to Goodreads at the time. And if I'm honest, it was the right decision. I was an undergraduate in 2008, and in my British Lit class, one of the books we had to read was Pride and Prejudice. I hate that book.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Beef
I think if Jane Austen was a good writer, she'd be a Bronte sister. To make matters worse, you might recall that this was the era when our society was salivating over all sorts of Pride and Prejudice adaptations. There was a movie where the guy from Succession wooed Keira Knightley. There was a book where Elizabeth Bennet slays zombies for some reason. It was Pride and Prejudice everywhere.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Beef
You can imagine my suffering. Now before I continue a little about me, I am a rule follower. If there is a rule in place, I am going to follow it because my number one goal in life is to never be a burden on anyone else. All of my report cards said I was a pleasure to have in class. I never tasted alcohol until I turned 21, and when I'm out on public land, you better believe I'm leaving no trace.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Beef
So it was extremely out of character when I logged on to Shelfari and created a new post on the Pride and Prejudice discussion page without first reviewing the community guidelines. But my hatred compelled me. I said, I hate all these snobby characters, especially Elizabeth Bennet.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Beef
She is rude to her family, she does not support any of her friends, and she even admits she only liked Mr. Darcy after she saw his big house, which makes her a class traitor on top of everything else. No, none of the characters in this book deserve happiness, especially her. My post generated quite a few responses. most of them aggressive.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Beef
But there was one that I found particularly insulting, posted by a user called Mr. Litman. And he said, please ask your parents' permission before you post anything that stupid on this page again. Maybe when you develop critical thinking skills, you can rejoin the discussion. Now obviously I wasn't going to take that sitting down. So before I responded, I stood up.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Beef
I could feel the blood rush to my head, my heart rate was increasing, I could tell that I was becoming angry online. If you're unfamiliar, common symptoms of angry online include typing in all caps, refreshing a page every 30 seconds or so, and of course, staying up to the wee hours of the morning to argue about a topic that does not matter. Please ask your doctor if any of that sounds familiar.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Beef
So anyway, there I was in my power pose, and I accused Mr. Litman of being old and too comfortable in his echo chamber, and thank goodness I was here to provide a new, correct perspective on this 200-year-old disgrace of a book. Well, friends, I'm afraid that was merely the first skirmish in what would become an all-out war with Mr. Litman.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Beef
Territory was gained and conceded throughout the evening, and our battles even spread to the other pages. I saw that he'd made a post on the Wuthering Heights page that Emily Bronte was the weakest of the Bronte sisters. So I responded to that, saying, why am I not surprised you're all so wrong about this, you waste of skin?
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Beef
He, in turn, found my positive review of The Great Gatsby, and he said, of course you like a book with a... Of course you like a book with a simplistic narrative where nothing happens. It's probably a fine mirror for your own life. Oh yeah, we were exchanging shots. And our war was being fought all over the site. I'm not going to go into detail on every post. But I think you all deserve to know.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Beef
Mockingbirds were killed. 1984 became an even worse year, and all was not quiet on the Western Front. The Shakespeare pages. Dear God. Despite the horrors of war, up to that point we had managed to avoid vulgarities. But back on the Pride and Prejudice page, that was about to change. I finally got Mr. Litman to crack. He posted, in all caps, Why don't you just shut up?
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Beef
And then he invited me to perform a very intimate act in a rather crude way. But I was still standing and I said, at least someone might walk away from that experience satisfied, a feeling denied to anyone who has to read Pride and Prejudice. It was my sickest burn. After that, I closed my laptop and I finally went to bed, comfortable with the knowledge that I had won.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Beef
I figured I'd let him know that I would be willing to negotiate the terms of his surrender the next day. The next day, I received the email from Shelfari. It seems multiple people had reported me, and after review, it was determined that I had violated a number of the site's bylaws, and as such, my account was permanently banned.
The Moth
The Moth Radio Hour: Beef
All my data, hundreds of books, all my posts, all my reviews, gone forever. And that sucked. I was devastated. But I've had things deleted before. What really left me distraught, and what stuck with me all these years, is that loss to the world was the only documented evidence of me breaking the rules.