Transcript - Jay Smooth's "Why you should feed the trolls"

I don't know anything about actually writing transcripts, so this has no added emphasis or descriptions of actions - it's just the text. Also, I'm all about the British English spelling, so there's lots of extra 'u's :P
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Link to video


So, we've been talking a lot over the last few weeks about trolls, and specifically about how there are different kinds of trolls. Some are more harmful than others, and you probably need to handle some trolls differently than others.

And over the past few weeks, I've been getting a lot of pushback on that idea, mostly from two different camps. The first camp consists of people who say "You shouldn't differentiate like that, because the only policy that ever works is 'don't feed the trolls', and if you ever do anything other than that, you're just giving them attention and giving them what they want and encouraging them." 

And the second group consists of self-identified trolls who feel that my framing of the issue is unfair to the troll community. They're basically like the troll equivalent of purist underground hip hop heads; they're like troll backpackers who feel like I'm promoting a distorted, mainstream misconception of what trolling is, instead of honouring the real underground, true-school traditions of trolling from back in the days.

And that second camp, the 'troll backpackers' - I actually want to try and take their complaints seriously and address them in depth later on. But for today I just want to try and address that first camp.

Now I can understand why a lot of people assume that 'don't feed the trolls' is always best, because as the troll-backpackers will be quick to remind you, the original, old-school trolling from back in the days was more about seeking petty forms of negative attention. Finding ways to start some drama and get a rise out of people by saying a bunch of stuff you don't really mean.

Its origins lie in a petty desire to provoke, and when you're dealing with that old, true-school, five elements form of trolling, a lot of the time the best thing to do is just walk away instead of endlessly going back & forth in a particular messageboard thread. But the problem is that over time, those tools and tactics associated with trolling have come to be used for more than just petty provocation. As people have seen how effective those tactics are in creating negative energy, they've learned that whenever you feel hatred towards somebody else for their perspective, or their voice, or their existence, you can use those trolling tactics to chase that person down in every space they inhabit online, and fill every part of their day-to-day life on the 
internet with the worst kinds of hate and threats and abuse.

And when you're dealing with that kind of harrassment, the only way you can implement the 'don't feed the trolls' rule is to relinquish your right to be on the internet at all. 

And the thing about that kind of sustained, hyperagressive, amplified kind of trolling is that it seems to happen a lot more often to some people than it does to others. It seems to happen a lot more often if you are LGBT, a woman, a person of colour - it happens a lot more often to people in marginalised groups.

And I think that means, that when someone else tells you that they're dealing with some trolls, especially if they're a member of one of those groups that you're not a member of, you should probably take
a minute to find out what they're dealing with before you just toss that old 'don't feed the trolls' chestnut at them. Because they may not be dealing with that old-school, back-in-the-days, 'we used to do it out in the park' trolling that's just in the pursuit of sound and fury - they might be dealing with that sustained, hyperagressive, major-label, big budget hatefulness that comes in pursuit of shame and silence.

And I'm not saying those smaller forms of trolling can't also be harmful and hard to deal with; I'm not saying I know the right answers for either one - I'm one of those who's been privileged not to deal with it a whole lot. But I think, usually, a good first step, especially if you've had the privilege of avooiding it, is to start by listening and asking exactly what's going on and how you can support. 

Because if they're getting harrassed in pursuit of their silence, and you tell them all they can do is just 'don't feed the trolls', in that scenario, it might be you who's helping the trolls win.