Predictably, many Confederate Facebook posts consist of proud displays of the Confederate flag—on tattoos, in wedding photos, flanked by flaming blue skulls, airbrushed onto truck windows, whatever. But then you can find people freaking out at the possibility that Obama might arrest them for posting racist stuff on Facebook, or getting mad that people are calling them racist.

I was beginning to feel stupefied and distressed, and my friends were complaining that all their recommended friends now had Confederate flag avatars as well. While some of the Confederate Facebookers were plum happy to have me on board—check out this weirdly adorable picture of a bowing horse someone sent me!—others, like the guy who told me to "run off and join ISIS," were not.

Just when I was about to unfriend them all and start drinking, I was invited to a private group of about 2,500 called "confederate pride, heritage not hate."

The group consisted of more of the same good ol' boy palaver about Southern Pride and Confederate Lives Matter, peppered with tirades from a handful of out-and-out Stormfront white supremacists and neo-Nazis. I added a few dozen of my friends, who promptly started trolling the shit out of the group.