How to Deal With Trolls
Trolls are just people. When we love them, they lose their ability to hurt us.
I love trolls.
I don't mean that I approve of trolling, or think that it's making our society better, or that we need more trolls. I mean that I love them as human beings.
How is this possible? In the course of my career as a political commentator, I've been called a lot of hateful things. I've been called a sociopath, an idiot, a warmonger, an asshole. I've been told I have blood on my hands and accused of not caring if children get sex trafficked. How can I claim to love the people who say these things?
The key is to remember that they're humans, and most are filled with pain. I've known trolls who were abused as children, who were going through a hard divorce, who were suffering from broken bodies or who were lonely old men without anyone to love in their life. I've never known a happy and fulfilled person who spent their days insulting strangers online.
Or as James Baldwin put it, far before the advent of the Internet: "I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain."
Remembering that trolls are broken people trying to hide from their pain completely changed how I interact with them. Now, I'm excited whenever a stranger online insults me or attacks my character; because that interaction creates an opportunity for me to try to help them.
Or as a prayer journal entry I recently read goes:
"Please fill me with your wisdom that I won’t just watch others suffer, but that I’ll be able to say what they need to hear. As a new week approaches, my dangerous prayer is that you’ll place broken-hearted people in my path and fill me with You so that I can let your love heal their pain."
(source: Not a Fan by Chris Idleman)
Seeing trolls in all their pain and all their humanity has been powerful for me. I used to be knocked off-kilter and hurt by the mean things that strangers would say to me online. Each insult and character attack would cut me. I still feel a little of that on some days, but mostly this mindset shift has helped me to flip the script. Love crowds out fear, and I can't be scared of someone whom I truly love.
(an important caveat: this doesn't apply to doxing and credible threats, both of which pose a more serious physical danger. It also doesn't apply to offline abusive relationships, where love and fear often and tragically go together. But it serves very nicely for strangers saying mean things online).
But there's a flaw in what I've said above. Perhaps you've spotted it. If so, you're quicker than me; it took me a solid year to identify and work through it.
The problem was that even when I loved trolls, I couldn't really help them because I also felt condescension towards them. I thought of them as hurt children who were throwing a tantrum. That condescension might have insulated me from the sting of their comments, but it was no way to navigate the world. Plus, it cut me off at the knees whenever I would try to help someone. When a troll insulted me, I would type out a message, and I could feel my own condescension coming through; and I would delete my message rather than kick my intermediary while he was already down.
But then I figured something out. And this key helped me to shift my mindset again, into a place of genuinely loving trolls without looking down on them.
What is this key? It's the realization that I'm not perfect either. This isn't a trivial thing. I might not insult strangers online; but I've done my damage to those I care about. When I'm in pain I can be short with my wife, or miss something important for a client, or not call back a friend who really needs me. How much worse would it be if I had a broken body, if I was going through a messy divorce, if the scars of the abuse I suffered were still fresh and my pain was boiling over?
I'm not better than my trolls in any meaningful way. Because the truth is, we've all fallen short. And we've all needed someone to minister to us.
So, here's our action item this week as a community of practice. Next time that someone is rude to you online, flip how you see them. Instead of seeing them as an asshole who's trying to hurt you, practice seeing them as someone in deep pain and who needs help (even if they don't want to admit it). From there, spend a few minutes praying, meditating, or doing whatever it is that you do to tap into your still small voice or your highest self.
And from that place, make a sincere effort to try to help the other person. And let us know how it went.
P.S. If you do this in earnest, some people will block you. That's not always a bad thing. In this case, if you're reaching out to a troll with genuine love and concern for them and without any trace of condescension, then being blocked can be a manifestation of the cognitive dissonance that you're generating in them. Cognitive dissonance is the first step towards change. Of course, the goal is not to be blocked; but don't get discouraged if it happens.
The goal of this exercise is to plant a seed.
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