[stcredzero]

I've been on the receiving end of prank calls. When I first reported it to the police, the officer assigned to my case seemed to have the attitude that I was just thin skinned. That changed the moment I played him a recording I made of the callers. After that, he was just as motivated to track them down as I was.

They turned out to be a bunch of teenage boys of low socioeconomic status. Their only reason for singling me out was my name which they had run across in the phone book. (The listing was in error -- it was supposed to be unlisted.) I suspect that their delight in the cruelty was enhanced by their conclusion that I was a poor immigrant who couldn't afford advanced features on his phone line. I suspect that they were happy to finally find someone "lower" than themselves to pick on.

If you've never been the subject of arbitrary cruelty by some kind of mob, then you don't really know what it's like. And if you don't know what it's like to grow up in a society that brands you as somehow inferior, such that cruelty to you constitutes some kind of "joke" then there's something else you don't really know.