Over – A romantic comedy online graphic novel by Tyler James

I was recently turned on to a Reddit thread that blew up this past week.  Head on over to  REDDIT, I Have Proof She Cheated On Me and Need a Revenge Plan — Is This Too Cruel? but I’ll recap the gist of it here:

A guy in his twenties caught his girlfriend with another guy, and did so without her knowing.  In such shock at her betrayal, he did nothing at the time, and spent the next few days stewing.  Finally, he decided to turn not to his friends, relatives, or therapist for advice, but instead, to the internet.  Determined to get revenge or retribution but unsure the best way to do so, he decided to call upon the wisdom of crowds (aka the Reddit community) for help.  And sure enough, more than 200 people chimed in with advice on what he should do.

Some gems from the peanut gallery:

Remove the glass from her lightbulb, attach a firecracker to the fuse. Place a bag of dog shit over it. When she flips the lightswitch, the bag will explode showering her and her room in shit.  There’s a start.

Tell her you’ve got AIDS.

Sleep with her Dad. She’ll NEVER see that one coming.

Pepper spray her dildo.

But far and away, the most popular strategy (the one most “upvoted” by Reddit users) was this one:

If you really want to make her insane, just go for complete, eternal silence. If you live together, move out, or pack her shit and leave it outside. If there are lease and money issues that complicate this, get a friend to deal with all of that for you. Don’t speak to her, don’t answer calls or texts. SHE DOESN’T EXIST. This will drive her insane. She will know that you know- but she will never know how you found out. She will be desperate to know, but it will always be a mystery. Best of all, you look cool. Not crazy or angry or heartbroken, but fucking cool as hell.

A whole lot of people agreed.  The deafening silence, the lack of closure…yeah, that could be maddening.

Well, the jilted gentleman who started the thread chimed in several times after posting, and resolved to get his revenge on Valentine’s Day.  He decided to ignore the silent exit strategy.  No, instead he chose a full on assault which included:

- Refilling her expensive facial cream with a donation of his own.

- Pre-breakup spite sex.

- Deleted his number from her cell-phone and changed the number of the guy she cheated on to his number (then later texted as the other guy, saying he was done with her, too.)

- Took her to a wonderful Valentine’s dinner acting as if everything was perfect, only to confront her on a walk by the lake afterwards.

- And finally, pull out a jewelry box, saying it was the ring he bought her, and tossed it in the lake.  (It was really a $15 plastic ring.)

(Oh, and I think he mentioned something about a possible STD, too.)  Well, clearly the high road was not taken there.

But in this case, that was his choice…not the internet’s.