Farrell: Caitlyn Jenner looks like an old boot? You don't say ...

During a Fourth of July party post-mortem Sunday morning, my friends and I landed on the topic of Thomas, a 6-year-old guest who chatted with me while I was preparing barbecued chicken in the kitchen.

My conversations with Thomas generally went like this:

Him: "Why are you taking so long in the kitchen? ... ... ... Hello??"

Me: "Oh! Um, are you talking to me? I'm so sorry. The chicken just needs to be ... um ... marinated. Aren't there kids outside that you can play with?"

Thomas was cute enough, I guess. He was precocious in a child sitcom actor sort of way, faux-hawked and confident. He stormed right into the family room at not-his-house without an ounce of shyness and interrupted a tumbling lesson between a man and his 4-year-old niece by boom, executing a (not good) cartwheel of his own that ended in a small victory walk.

"Don't mind me," he told us with false modesty. "I take gymnastics."

All little kids think they're infallible and the center of the universe, but that goes away with time.

Thomas is going to need a lot of time.

In the course of the night, I witnessed him tell a little girl who walked by to stop singing because she wasn't good, loudly ridicule a boy's pronunciation of "Mario Brothers" and inform another kid that he was bad at playing dinosaurs.

My friend laughed when I shared my observations: "Thomas is blunt."

"Blunt?" I said. "I was so scared the whole time he was here that he was going to tell me the truest thing about myself and just cut me right to the bone."

I didn't need to hear that my white jeans were too tight or to answer questions about my lack of husband/children/bathing suit body, so I stayed out of Thomas' way just in case he considered my elective presence to be consent for his criticism.

Again, he is 6. I am 40. But I knew who Thomas was. Or rather, who he would grow up to be.

That is, a troll who spends his adult nights doling out precise and funny insults to whomever gets in his path, in life and online.

Why? Because he can. Not because he's sad or insecure. Not because he didn't get hugged enough by his parents. Because the insults are right there on the tip of his tongue. Because feeling superior is his talent. Because he can make people laugh when he says the thing.

That is why.

Or maybe he'll be a lovely man. I don't know. Who can predict these things, really?

I've been thinking about insults a lot lately, though, especially ones made in large public forums. Especially ones that focus solely on people's appearances -- particularly Caitlyn Jenner's.

Right away people went for it with her:

"Big feet!"

"Old lady shoes!"

"Ugly dress."

"Face like an old boot."

"Overdoing the dieting."

"Size 14!"

"Kate Middleton on crack."

Jenner, "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart observed, gets to truly feel like a woman now with the constant physical judgment.

How true.

Guys get it too, though.

When Caitlyn was Bruce, for instance, it was no different.

"What's with his face?"

"Two earrings???"

"He looks like an old lesbian."

Actually, maybe this just proves he really was a woman all along.

No one likes to be insulted or criticized -- not the kind that needlessly seeks to destroy, anyway.

Even when it's not about a person's appearance, it's cutting. It's an indictment on another's general choices and way of life. The insulter takes something away from the person being insulted.

"You think you're amazing? You still look like a man in a dress."

Because of the Internet, insulting others has become a sort of sport. There is a winner and a loser with each exchange.

For some people, this is fun -- to watch and to participate in.

For others, it's just what they know how to do.

It's what they're best at.

"You take a really long time to make chicken."

"No really, Thomas. The kids are outside."

Follow columnist and senior editor Liz Farrell at twitter.com/elizfarrell and facebook.com/elizfarrell.

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This story was originally published July 6, 2015 at 6:48 PM with the headline "Farrell: Caitlyn Jenner looks like an old boot? You don't say ...."