I had a best friend once. Met him in Korea through Tumblr, back when Tumblr was actually a place for weird creatives instead of a digital graveyard. If you checked the stats back then, me and him were doing numbers. We both shot street photography, both had that same slightly unhinged sense of humour, and Seoul gave us plenty of room for nonsense. He was genuinely hilarious to be around. Sharp, chaotic, creative. The kind of friend where every random outing could turn into a story you’d still be laughing about ten years later.

Then he moved back to the States.

And slowly, like watching milk go bad in real time, man turned into a completely different person.

He did this, did that, ended up back in his home state doing home state things with home state people. Joined some kind of “church,” discovered culture-war YouTube, and suddenly started using the word faggot with genuine enthusiasm, like slurs were a substitute for a personality. At one point, he offered to mail me a Gavin McInnes book like he was handing me sacred scripture. I believe ANTIFA calls it “red-pilled.” I prefer “men with weak identities and low standards looking for applause.”

He refused to stop referring to me in crude ways, so I ended the friendship. Simple. Free country, free choices. If your whole new personality is smug contrarianism, offensive memes, and trying desperately to offend the same progressives you once tried to impress, cool. Pattern your life. Just do it far away from mine.

At the time, he had a partner and they were both deep in that church life together. Proper red-state religiosity. I figured he’d looked around, clocked his partner’s father, local politics, and the social ladder, and decided the Right looked like the winning team. So he switched jerseys. Happens all the time.

And honestly, it would’ve been fine if he’d just stayed over there and lived his new life in peace.

But apparently, it’s harder for some people to stop being friends with me than it is for me to stop being friends with them. What can I say? I’m affable. Memorable. A delight.

Then, weirdly, he started a nonprofit providing dog food to low-income dog owners. Which, to be fair, is objectively kinder than most of his personality at that stage. I’m not sure if it still exists, but credit where it’s due. Though he also emailed me offering, in jest I assume, to take all the stock from my “failing” business. Very supportive. Real community-minded stuff.

This formerly fun-to-be-around man then made fake Instagram accounts to send people homophobic messages and make it look like they were coming from my “failing” small business. Proper loser behaviour. Just small, mean, and embarrassingly juvenile. The kind of thing you’d expect from a teen, not a grown man.

Every now and then he pops back up like bad diarrhea. Recently it’s been silly comments on LinkedIn and even sillier emails buried in the spam folder. One message trolling me for not having a job at my age. Another accusing me of losing my virginity to a child prostitute in Vietnam. Never even been to Vietnam.

Imagine typing that out, hitting send, and then getting dressed for church on Sunday.

Merica.