I’ll be the first to admit it: I have trolled, and I will troll again.
I’d like to talk a bit about this increasing troll reality that has become an accepted part of this new digital age we find ourselves in.
I’m mostly interested in the mechanisms that activate the troll in us. I doubt there is a way to end all trolling, so this isn’t about that. I’m more hashing out my thoughts and trying to be honest about what I’ve noticed in my own inner troll. It’s easy to point out and target the troll we see in others, but can you see the troll in yourself?
I do think that most of us humans are generally good people and don’t want to get caught up in a troll whirlwind. Speaking of my own history, I can share that one of the main reasons I left Facebook was that I found myself too often getting into back-and-forth debates over things that, in general, I didn’t care much about anyway. More often than not, I entered into this verbal sparring because I was invested in being annoyed by the way a person shared their opinions. Many times, it would start with small misinterpretations and just spiral into full-on ‘fuck you’ fests.
Here on Hive, I have mostly managed to keep myself out of this realm of petty back-and-forth bickering, though I still do the troll dance occasionally.
Let’s explore. Typically, these back-and-forth issues start with someone expressing an opinion about something you say. Often, it’s a snarky commentary that calls into question whatever you said. Then, you feel the need to “put them in their place.” How many wasted hours have I spent crafting the perfect retort—often intentionally insulting and designed to cut them down and leave them feeling dumb for having said what they said? You hit the send button and feel a sense of satisfaction, thinking, ‘That will shut this idiot up.’
This satisfaction is always short-lived, as inevitably the other person responds with a barbed-wire tongue, making me out to be the idiot. FFS, how dumb is this person? My mind already starts writing a response to their response. And so it goes, both sides digging their trenches until it typically ends in name-calling. ‘Moron.’ ‘No, you are the moron,’ while people munch popcorn from the sidelines.
I saw the childish ‘nanny nanny boo-boo’ nature in myself and checked out of the places that were triggering me. I developed a little personal tool that has helped me over the years. Before I hit send on any message that’s in the context of a disagreement, I read it out loud or imagine myself saying it directly to the person, as if they are right in front of me. If I know I wouldn’t say it directly to the person, I don’t hit send. Often, I just use this as my cue not to respond. Just the act of writing and not sending satiates the inner troll. That, or I rewrite my response until what I have to say feels like something I would have no issue saying directly to the person. This little technique has been a game changer in my world. It has saved me much aggravation and has even, at times, led to agreement and resolution rather than further troll commentary.
I doubt I’m alone in realizing that as social media becomes more prevalent in our lives, there’s a need to find ways of navigating the troll realms and keeping our own inner trolls at bay. It’s too easy to feel empowered by the anonymity and distance provided by the internet, and then use that power to bring out the worst in ourselves or others. These behaviors are not only personally damaging but are also contributing to a broader division-based discourse in society. We are becoming desensitized to cruelty and hostility. As we collectively experience less and less in-person communication, we so often forget how to treat each other with kindness and respect. Finding agreement and being conciliatory is generally how we behave in person-to-person interaction. Don’t get me wrong, there are trolls in real life too, but I’m speaking in general about how most humans tend to behave in face-to-face encounters.
I believe that the key to combating trolling and other forms of online harassment lies in empathy. We need to remind ourselves that behind every screen is a real person. They may be a dick, a bitch, a dumbass, but likely you too suck in your own way. Seeing the asshole troll in myself helps me to forgive the asshole troll in you—the one who has gotten under my skin and pulled out a reaction. A reaction I allowed and am fully responsible for, yet nothing beats a good scapegoat for our behavior.
It’s been quite some time since I got into one of these troll battles. But I recently encouraged my wife to write a post on Hive. @myinnervoice wrote a total of two posts. And on her second post ever, she encountered a guy judging her for adding photos of our kids in her post. My wife asked, “What do you do with trolls on Hive? Can I block him?” I said she could mute and downvote him, but there wasn’t much else. It was clear to me that to her, this wasn’t enough—that she wanted a way to prevent this man from being able to engage with her. I think I realized then and there that she would stop posting. (I hold out hope, but she hasn’t made another post.)
This all set me off, and I reacted to this guy’s comments in exactly the opposite way of what I said above. First, I went on a downvote rampage on everything I could find active of his. I took it personally, and my troll was unleashed in a glorious fury. I took my troll to one of his posts, and years of pent-up and held-back trolling splooged all over his post with my comment. It was glorious. We went back and forth, saying the shittiest, most hurtful things we could think of to each other. Only after a few days of this tit-for-tat onslaught did I start to have that icky, wrong feeling—like a blushing boy whose mom had just found his sticky cum sock. What had i become?
Ultimately, I had to take responsibility for starting the downvote war. Lol, I’ve almost never downvoted anyone on Hive…and here I was, trading downvotes with someone I didn’t know for boo. I’m still irritated that he had to comment on my wife’s post with some bullshit, as I would have loved her to keep posting. But if it wasn’t him, someone else would have posted some other bullshit. The day she realized she could do little about trolls on Hive was always going to come.
I’m all for free speech, so yeah, I like that no one can take away your account for what you post. But I do take some of my wife’s points on board. Women deal with shitty men throughout their entire life. Her stance is that there should be some way to isolate your account from a person who trolls or feels threatening. It’s not about taking a person’s right to post as they please, but that a person should be able to extricate their profile from them; this is also a right. That muting is not enough.
Curious about others’ opinions on this? Specifically curious to hear women who regularly post on Hive’s opinion?