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disenjoyment t1_jedk1s8 wrote

"Hm, yeah I know what you mean. The family business had some part in that, actually."

My response made my buddy give me the 'you better finish this story and not just leave it like that' look. I sighed and continued.

"Well, you know what we do. So imagine you're me, some decades ago, having just inherited the family biz. It's the time to prove myself and not fuck everything up. Who's the first client I get, though? Loki. How much do you know about him?"

"I mean, I've seen him in Marvel movies?"

"Right, well. Somewhat accurate. He's a trickster god who would have royally fucked up any task I could have assigned him. It's not like these jobs for gods need to be productive. They mostly just need to keep them distracted and out of trouble."

I paused in thought, remembering the day I assigned him that job. I still have bouts of guilt over the whole thing, and wonder what could have been. Even during this moment, my first time telling anyone outside of the family about it, I'm unable to think of an alternative. I know that if the rest of the world knew, I'd be hated.

"So you made him—"

"Right, decades ago. It was the dawn of a new frontier; a digital frontier. The Internet. Obviously, it was a complete fad and going nowhere. At the time, the main thing you could do was go on bulletin boards. I figured that at the very least, it didn't affect the real world. Like, what could he possibly do? Just turn off your terminal, right? Close your eyes."

I let out a crazed laugh. I'd thought about all of this so many times already. Tried to justify it to myself. Told myself I couldn't have known it would become so prevalent in everyone's daily's life. My buddy was staring at me now, and I wrapped up the story.

"Anyway, yeah. That's why the Internet is such a toxic place. You'd might as well call him something like the God of Trolling now. On the bright side, it looks like there's no chance of Loki ever getting bored and needing us to find a different job for him."

"Bruh."

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