Image by Nikki Casey

I have a confession: my best friend is a Nazi Twitter egg.

It started when I humbly wished the Twitterverse a Happy Hanukkah. Not much traffic from my 11 followers, but @zeeg88 — a stranger! — responded with a picture of an oven captioned “lol is this where you’re celebrating.”

@zeeg88, I thought, you haven’t got a clue what the Hanukkah rituals are, and that’s a shame. Here’s a teachable moment.

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“No,” I replied, “more like this.” I shared a picture of my three-year-old niece playing dreidel next to latkes.

“antisemitism is FAKE NEWS,” Zeeg responded. I chewed on my pencil. “Anti-Semitism certainly exists,” I wrote back, “but you’re right that it’s only one of a number of pressing social issues that face our country.”

The rest, you could say, is history. Each morning I check my mentions, and @zeeg88 is there. It’s a pretty special relationship. I appreciate how open she is with me, and don’t get me started on her sense of humor. “Holohoaxers deserve a real shoah,” says Zeeg; “Zeeg, you subversive wit,” say I.

I know, I know, “trolls” are a problem, but I for one am grateful for Twitter’s lax enforcement of its hate speech policies. After all, the fewer borders the better, right, Zeeg? Oops, her response isn’t printable. But no matter how many pejoratives she uses, or how badly she misspells them, I know deep down she loves me too. After all, why else would she keep coming back?

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