Tackling the Trolls: How to Sanely Survive the Internet of Ideas

Trolls during an unusual era of superior re-branding, colloquially known as the 1990s.

Oh trolls, the once mythical creatures who lurked under bridges terrifying middle-ages protagonists, who now skulk in the vicinity of every remotely heated post, tweet, thread & sub-Reddit feeding on negative human emotions like the swamp monsters that they truly are.

If this isn't your first time on the Internet, you probably know not to "feed" trolls, i.e. give them attention or respond to their provocation. Much like doing more exercise or meditating, not engaging with online trolls is sound advice which we often dispense yet at times fail to follow.

Even those of us who 'be best' as best as one can be will still come across these malignant growths leaning on the laboring windpipe of online public discourse, and those of us who are still somewhat open minded may find ourselves questioning- even after the fact- "Why IS that, that the thing they said is so?".

We needn't be frightened to have our ideas, our narrative, challenged. Being able to separate substance from style, to consider an idea regardless the person presenting it, those are gifts rather than weaknesses. Allowing elasticity in our perception of the world is important to our ability to grapple with a changing reality, regardless of the ill mannered and potentially basement-dwelling source.

Be those lofty ideals as they may, we are all susceptible to heightened emotional responses when provoked, and going into battle- even that of the minds- is always better with a plan. Here are a few things to consider as you proceed into the abyss of internet ideas:

Ask Yourself: Do I need to be somewhere? The time does tend to fly when you are arguing online. Show yourself the same respect you are demanding from KongFuPanda66 and make sure you are not neglecting your responsibilities in favor of an energy depleting exercise in futility. Do you need to be somewhere in 20 minutes? if so, STOP TYPING.

Strategy: Create a simple mantra to center yourself. It shouldn't be TL;DR or in Sanskrit- unless you're fluent, of course. What you need is a simple incantation to bewitch you into behaving as you ought to. Something along the lines of "I am an adult. An adult who will not be late for a meeting or skip a meal because of a dissenting opinion, regardless of how ignorant or malicious it may be".

Ask Yourself: How much do I really know about this topic? Can you speak about the subject at hand with authority? someone else's vitriol may get under your skin, even make your blood boil, but are you really the best person to be setting them straight? of course it is good to stand up for your principles, but remember that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, thus a well meaning yet uninformed advocate can often do more harm than good.

Strategy: Seek a smartypants. If you want to better advocate for a topic in which you instinctively, even viscerally, believe- look for an expert on that topic, one who's ideas are salient enough to you to pass on. If it's a field of research you may want to refer to a professor or journalist, if it is a social issue perhaps look for a community discussing their lived experience. Either way, you should never be embarrassed about believing something intuitively that you cannot explain intellectually, so long as you keep an open mind to new information which you may learn along the way.

Ask Yourself: Why do they & I believe what we believe? Is this a political or sociological issue relating directly to how each person defines their identity? Is this an issue which our perspective on can be deeply impacted by our socioeconomic background or where we grew up? Sure, it's always great fun to accuse others of group think and call them 'sheeple', but we should always maintain a healthy level of low-key paranoia about our own blind-spots, biases & potential for dogmatic thinking. Understanding why others believe what they do can help us develop a greater sense of empathy towards them, and understanding why we believe what we do can keep us aware of our own unexamined ideas and unchallenged assumptions.

Strategy: Read & research. The idea here is not to substitute our own half-baked musings with those of our virtual adversaries, but rather to gain actual knowledge. This strategy requires us to leave our respective echo chambers in search of objectivity-adjacent information. It's not just about finding a person who explains this well, it's about going deep into the weeds of a topic to fully understanding it's complexities and nuances.

Take, if you will, the example of the phrase- or alleged phenomena- known as "black on black crime". At risk of giving oxygen to an idea which should rightfully be dead, I'll simply outline that this is an allegation made mostly against black Americans and usually in response to their criticism of systemic racism and police brutality. The what about black on black crime? charge was an immediately infuriating one to my ears, but in a much more insidious and confusing way than many other fallacies I had encountered up until that point. I felt that it was wrong, in both a factual & moral sense, but was not then able to explain to someone who disagreed why. It was only the reading and research I did on this topic that allowed me to unpack the many facets of this claim and dismantle them. In this instance I had to find statistical corroboration or refutation of this claim (FBI records provided this) while researching other unique causes of this potential phenomena (Socioeconomic, historic, geographic etc) and even challenging my own ideas or implicit biases on the issue despite believing I was on the 'enlightened' side of it (why did it never occur to me to use a term such as white on white crime? Asian on Asian crime?). All of this I had to research in order to get as close as possible to objective metrics of truth, and deeper understanding. Since this is not an article about black on black crime, suffice it to say that I was able to dismantle this topic from these multiple angles, and was better equipped for the next online adversary looking to rejuvenate this concept's corpse.

Ask Yourself: Is this truly a troll? Remember, trolls generally have one objective in mind and that is to cause a commotion, to invoke insult and to feed on your rage. It's entirely possible that someone may engage in troll-depth arguments while still believing that they are the ones fighting for justice and you are the troll. With good faith actors, who are acting out of genuine compassion or concern, there can be dialogue. It is not easy to build that bridge, but it is at least possible. With true trolls, you are wasting your breath and key strokes.

Strategy: Ask your conversational counterpart how you can change their mind. The best way to do this would be to ask, straight up: "Is there any information I could show you that could cause you to change your mind?" - this, or a similar iteration may be difficult to achieve organically in conversation, but is the most straightforward way to get where you are going. In this day and age someone who is not a troll per se could still lack the will to share another's set of facts and sources of info, let alone their perspective. As with any other question aimed at the opposition, direct this question at yourself as well. Would I, given different set of facts and information, be willing to change my mind? if the answer from either side is no- you know this isn't a dialogue, these are two monologues happening simultaneously, as bothersome as they are pointless.

And finally, ask yourself: What is the point of any of this? We often start conversations, or rather arguments, with an objective of getting a specific point or message across. More often than not, unfortunately, we lose sight of that goal pretty quickly and it shifts to a different goal: winning. We are no longer aiming to be seen and understood as much as we are aiming to prove a point to the other person, to 'dunk on them' with our superior wit and intellect, to render them speechless. Much like with other escalations of force, this too is an exercise in futility.

Strategy: Conserve your energy. There is only so much storage space in that noggin of yours. Embedding ourselves into a Sisyphean back and fourths risks turning us into the human equivalent of a Hummer: large, loud, impossible to ignore, comically ill-adapted to our surroundings and a ludicrous waste of energy.