“You are a donkey,” the comment barked. At first, I thought I knew what that anonymous user meant: that I was being an ass. Looking back, I think I was wrong - to this day I still don’t know what he meant. The meaning haunts me at work, on my leisurely drives, whenever I try to sleep (in my dreams too), in any conversation I have, and whenever I’m on a date. When I thought I knew the meaning, I thought nothing of it - but now it’s an unhealthy obsession in deciphering the meaning of “you are a donkey”.

In actuality, it wasn’t worded as “you are a donkey”; verbatim it was “you are donky”.
–––– –
I’m back in ninth-grade English class, the desks were made of leather, and the walls a beige. On the ill-shaped walls were quotes and portraits of Shakespeare, Thomas Jefferson, and even Anne Frank; there were other people of notoriety on the wall, their faces as awkward as their quotes.

Mrs. G - no one could pronounce her entire last name - sat on a stool and read off a piece of paper; her horse-like legs struggled to fit into her jeans. “‘And,’ he stated. ‘You are not a human who can control emotions. But rather, you are donky.’” She put the paper on her large lap and gave the class a meaningful stare. “What did the author mean by this?”

There was that awkward silence you’ll find in any school, a silence of confusion, or lack of confidence, or a way to run the clock. People looked at each other, afraid they’ll get ridiculed for answering wrong. The worst thing about a High School English class was there was only one right answer, and in the idea of the curriculum, other plausible solutions were false.
Finally, she stared and pointed at me, “What do you think the author meant?”

I had no idea what they meant, it was obvious by my uncomfortable silence. I was examined like a piece of fine art from across the room; everyone was waiting for my response. I was unsure in response, “I believe Gunther was calling her an asshole?”

I received a few snorts from across the room, and while I was trying to respond, Mrs. G stood up and prepped her marker. Finally, as I finished, she wrote down ASSHOLE in broad strokes on the whiteboard.

“Very good,” Mrs. G said with her plain voice, her donkey-like tail flicked left and right with each one of her pen strokes. “Any other ideas? How about you, Verlaine?”
–––– –
I work as a web designer for a relatively small corporation. We mostly handle IT, however, we do have our own websites - they’re usually small passion projects that do not get a lot of clicks. One of them had a custom AI a co-worker and I built: Forward Thinker AI. Forward was basically an argument bot; you would write a response and it would argue with you. Half of the time its arguments would never hold, sometimes its syntax would explode into an alphabet soup, and most of the time it curses endlessly.

Forward Thinker was fed online arguments; which is why it probably failed to articulate and hold a proper argument.

My mind was still locked in on that thought: “You are a donkey.” I couldn’t help but look back at what caused that response. I flipped through my phone, looking back at comment history before finally finding my original comment: “It’s annoying to have it dangled in front of us like a carrot on a stick only to be pulled away.” That’s what confused me the most; what had made me second guess my original idea. Was it my annoyance or my word choice that made me seem inhuman?

I realized I never replied back to that “you are a donkey” comment, but then again, what was I supposed to say? I grimaced at my options before finally deciding on something stupid - it made as much sense as the “you are a donkey”. I replied: “And you are a hypocrite.”

I pulled up Forward Thinker to blow off some steam; I gave it stupid arguments and watched it fail with every attempt. It was funny watching it think it had won, only to re-read what it had said, and see error upon error in both logic and grammar. Then, I came up with an idea, what if I called Forward Thinker a donkey? How would it respond?
I typed it in, and this is what I got in response: “Comparing me to animal shows that you have lost,”

I turned the argumentative AI off after that.
–––– –
The whiteboard was filled to the brim with ideas, and Mrs. G was still drawing them down. At the very top, underlined and marked with quotes, was “You are a donkey” in neat calligraphy.

“A lot of you said that the narrator was acting animalistic; and that her behavior warranted that response,” She turned around and faced the crowd, her tail swooping like a metronome. “Do you think the narrator’s response to ‘you are a donkey’ made her seem more animalistic?” There were steady, unsure nods in the classroom; but a general consensus was made.

I rose my hand and Mrs. G called on me to answer, “I still don’t seem to understand what Gunther meant; why call her a donkey?” I said.

Mrs. G pursed her lips, showing her large buck teeth, “It’s up to the reader to dissect its meaning. After all, what is the meaning of a red sky in a story? The color red can mean a lot of
things in that type of scene; what matters though is the theme and the character’s actions. We can all agree that the narrator, in Gunther’s eyes, was acting stupidly.”

There was a general nod in the classroom, this time everyone was sure. However, I still wasn’t: his comment didn’t make sense in the grand scheme of things.
–––– –
A week went by and like most arguments - or important jobs - it left my head; “you are a donkey” was lost to time. What helped with this was the anonymous commenter’s refusal to respond to me. In the end, I guess I won that argument. The hauntings I got had seemed to stop, and I was free of the burden of not knowing what “donkey” meant.

Life went by smoothly, Mrs. G’s buckteeth, her tail, and her class vanished from my dreams, I no longer felt pressured on my drive, and I was actually getting stuff done at work; whatever would be classified as work.

Life was going smoothly; that was until someone who was touring the office wanted to see some of our passion projects. I gave them the simple rundown of our products: Jupiter Storage (inferior excel), Sir Know-A-Lot (a sorting algorithm that is compatible with Excel and Sheets; doesn’t work half the time), and finally Forward thinker - the argument AI. Despite being notorious in the office - and one of my own projects - I had not touched it ever since it obliterated me - saying that I had lost.

I didn’t realize it until now, but it saved the last chat I had with it; the incident chat. It stared me down with: “comparing me to animal shows that you have lost,” and the memories and worries flurried back to me like an emotional hurricane. Through the simple grey background that Forward Thinker used, I could see the face of Mrs. G; her face contorted into a muzzle, her large ears pointed toward the sky, and she honked loudly at me.

The person who was touring the office was thoroughly impressed with what I created; he gave a little lecture to me, “this AI is amazing; with a bit of polishing, we can use it for real-world implications. I’m sure the state debate team would love to get their hands on this!”

Of course, he didn’t know the full picture of Forward Thinker AI, he didn’t know its problems; he didn’t know that half the time it would curse and throw slurs at you and call it a day.

“Yeah,” I responded nonchalantly; I wanted to call him a donkey. Then, that’s when I remembered the root cause of this issue, this delirium, this over-inflated debacle that had gone straight to my head. Out of spite and anger, I typed, “And you are a hypocrite” into the response box.

What Forward Thinker spat out was amazing; it solved the crisis that had suddenly snuck up on me for good. Finally, I understood what it meant. While it was just a dumb argument in tandem with a stupid meaning - and eventually I would lose my satisfaction on the meaning Forward made me understand - for now I had won, I was content, I had bliss.