Armstrong And Viele, Trolls, Our Silence, And My Apology: Where Do We Go From Here?

Over the last few months, I have given some thought to what we on the internet often refer to as trolls. I haven't written about the issue or even discussed it at length with others, because, to be honest, I wanted to distance myself from anything that might garner me negative attention. After witnessing the recent public confrontation on Twitter between Heather Armstrong of Dooce and Anna Viele of ABDPBT, though, I really feel that I need to come clean about something, because this kind of behaviour has come too close to home too often for me to stay quiet any longer. It simply feels unjust to stay silent when people I care about are affected by my silence.


Heather Armstrong and I in San Francisco in 2008

A troll is "...someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community... with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion." If you haven't felt the magic taint of a troll on your own blog, you've at least likely seen a troll in action somewhere else on the internet, be it on another's blog, on Twitter or Facebook, or in a discussion forum. I know I have.

I have been visited by trolls five times that I can clearly remember: two times the trolls were people I knew in real life who decided to openly insult me in my weblog comments, one time I was treated to violent threats by strangers over an article I wrote on another website, in another incident a past online acquaintance resurfaced to insult all and sundry on my Facebook wall, and the fifth time the troll was a man who vigorously defended his plagiarism of my work. My experience is limited in a world where some people receive this kind of treatment on a daily basis, but, still, I have felt the special anti-joy that only a troll can bring, and, let me tell you, it does not foster the happy.

I am not here to argue who is or who is not a troll in the public battle between Armstrong and Viele, but when Heather stood up for herself against poor public reporting from both Rowan Davies at guardian.co.uk and Viele on Twitter, both of whom criticized her for what they termed Armstrong's "poverty tourism" on her recent trip in service of the charitable organization Every Mother Counts (see Suebob and Mom-101's excellent rebuttals to the criticism), it struck a chord with me that started a small avalanche of realizations about trolls and my past behavior with regard to them:

1. We falsely cast experiences of anything that happens on the internet as inferior to experiences of anything that happen off the internet, even though actions in both places bear demonstrable effects upon actual human beings.
2. It has felt as though I am being sucker-punched in the gut by each troll that I have experienced, which is not at all unlike the real life bullies I have experienced.
3. Remaining silent about those who bullied me offline, whether it was in elementary school or in a work environment, never stopped the bullying and, in fact, lead to a continuance of that abuse over years of my life.
4. Trolls, who by any other name would be bullies, can be a serious matter, and if we discourage silence about offline bullies, it does not make much sense to then encourage silence when it comes to online trolls.

What I need to come clean about, though, is not that I've been bullied and had trolls. On or off the internet, most of us have been bullied at some point or another. What I need to come clean about is the terrible advice about trolls which I have given out to friends in the past.

There are a number of you who have come to me when you've had issues with trolls. You've come to me when trolls have persisted in attacking you publicly, when they have unloaded nastiness into your email inbox, and when they have gone so far as to contact other people you know in an effort to undermine your reputation, and I gave you what advice I thought I had to give.

I told you what so many of us have parroted to each other over the years: don't feed the trolls. I told you to ignore them, to refuse to acknowledge them publicly, to not even give them the satisfaction of admitting out loud how they affected you. I told you to take the higher road and carry on as though they didn't exist.

I think the don't-feed-the-trolls advice we often adhere to stems from the fact that we pay too much heed to the currency of internet traffic. We encourage silence in the face of online bullying as though that will rob them of the attention that traffic brings, like we are denying a plant its water. In some cases, this tactic can work. It has worked for me in a couple of instances, but not all trolls are the same. If you try to starve a troll of traffic who thinks that 50 visitors is monumental, your silence won't work. Also, some trolls really do take pleasure in hurting you and you specifically without regard for how many people see it, like that girl in grade four who treated me so sweetly in front of others but left black welts on my arms and legs when no one was looking.

Sometimes not feeding the troll amounts to silencing and isolating a victim.

As Sweetney so eloquently stated it: "...we're writers who're slowly being trained and groomed to be gutless and stay silent when we should most stand up and say something, for fear of making ourselves targets." I believe that a path paved by fear is a dangerous one, and more and more I am coming to believe that it is silence that lends the trolls their backbones.

To those who have come to me when they have experienced online trolls, I apologize not only for oversimplifying a complex situation but also for encouraging your silence in the face of abuse. I have downplayed the depth of your experiences and have inadvertently worked to cover up injustice against you. I did you a disservice. I told you what was easy for me to say. I told you what required the least amount of action from me.

I am so sorry.

Maybe, instead of quietly willing it away, we should follow the advice we give to our children and choose to speak out when someone is hurting us or doing something wrong.

Maybe we've been thieving our own agency by counselling silence.

If you need to be heard, shout about it. If you need to share your story, if someone else might benefit from hearing your words, pound that mother out on your keyboard. Bring what's dark out into the light.

I am no expert on bullies and trolls — if I knew how to put a swift end to a bully's behaviour, my life would look remarkably different — so I want to hear from you about the issue:

• Why do we encourage silence when it comes to online trolling among adults when we encourage speaking out against bullying among children and adolescents both online and off?
• In an environment that thrives on the concept of freedom of speech, how do we know when an individual's behaviour has crossed the line of bad taste or ignorance?
• How can we deal with bullies and trolls if and when an attempt to starve them of attention doesn't work to make them lose interest?
• Have you had to deal with a troll, and how did you handle it? How did others react to what happened to you?

Where do we go from here?