In July I wrote a piece called Don't Feed the Trump, which was mostly about what I had learned from dealing with trolls in the 40-plus years I've been on the Internet. Imho there's a lot of wisdom in that piece, and if it had been heeded by the press, we'd probably be preparing for the Clinton presidency, not Trump's.

What's done is done, water under the bridge, etc -- Trump is the president-elect, and in 17 days he will be the 45th president. Yadda yadda yadda. 

But he's no longer a troll. I think that needs to be said clearly. A troll is someone who steals your energy and uses it to attract attention to himself. POTUS, by definition can't be a troll. He already has all the attention. If you respond to him, or RT him, or write a post about him, you are not doing anything to call more attention to him. It's analogous to pointing a flashlight at the sun. No one will notice, except for the few people around you.

So at this point, we're in uncharted territory. A person who behaves as if he were a troll, campaigning for an office he has already won, making predictions that will come true or won't, being watched by everyone on the face o earth. 

Yesterday I RT'd one of his tweets with a simple question, asking why he thought the North Koreans wouldn't be able to launch an ICBM in the early days of his presidency. Famous author and former Wired colleague Kevin Kelly played back the advice I had given so many, and I acknowledged that he was right and I had indeed fed the troll. But on reflection, I realized the rules had changed. 

So this morning I did it again, stating that without ObamaCare I wouldn't have health insurance, and I didn't appreciate his campaigning and that it's time for him to get to work and start caring about the millions of Americans like me who depend on it for health care. 

Our role at this point is to remind the soon-to-be commander in chief and remind ourselves that the job he is about to occupy works best if he at least pretends to care about all Americans, and instead of campaigning, he projects the impression that he is hard at work trying to make America (sigh) great again. The campaign is over Mr Trump. It's past time for you to get serious about the work you signed up to do. That should be our posture to his troll-like behavior, to remind him he is not the outsider he used to be. He's sitting in the hot seat, the one with the red phone and the big button that blows up the world.