How often have I heard the sage advice, never feed an internet troll? Yet I did it anyway.
But sometimes the on-line aggressors are terribly hard to ignore. Trolls get personal. They go after your ego; seek to identify and target insecurities, thrive on your fears of seeming silly or being judged. They know that you will want to prove them wrong; rectify injustices; see obnoxious behavior castigated. They know that you will want to win.
What is an internet troll exactly? Wikipedia defines a troll as a person who posts “inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response.”
Some victims have reported experiences with trolls that are extreme, with trolls launching attacks on personal appearance, defaming the victim, or impersonating their dead parents. My recent experience was far less extreme but still unsettling.
What happened was this: I had posted a tweet, a picture of my cat with the description: “My inspiration for my most recent novel entitled Paw.” Afterward I went to my notifications screen and saw this message:
“The word ENTITLED is not used to name BOOKS. The CORRECT word to use for BOOKS is TITLED.”
I take pride in writing well, and for a split second I felt like I was being dropped from a precipice. A burning flush rose to my cheeks with the question, Could he be right?
I did not think so. I had heard “entitled” used for books for as long as I could remember. I have always liked the word, and I like the prefix “en.” “Entitle” belongs to the same opulent family as “enrich,” “endow,” and “enable.” Using “title” as a verb is to me as aesthetically thin and watery as skim milk, whereas “entitle” sounds like a deliberate act.
But I did have a grain of doubt. Hearing others use a word used in a certain way did not make my usage correct, and I had never read a rule about how to use “entitle.”
My tweet had been shared over twenty times, and if my critic was right, then many people had seen my error. I Googled the word “entitle” and consulted several different online dictionaries, including Merriam-Webster. To my relief, they all confirmed that using the word “entitled” for a book was fine, a perfectly respectable synonym for “titled.”
But I did discover that a vocal minority of other writers disapprove of using “entitle” to name to books, art, stories, or games. They argue that “entitle” should be exclusively used for giving a right to someone, as in, “She felt entitled to drive the car she had bought.”
However the “entitle” curmudgeons are not supported by grammar authorities. According to the dictionaries I was right, and I wanted my all-caps-loving critic to know it. I wrote him a message telling him he was mistaken and I included a link to Merriam-Webster in case he doubted my word.
I thought the matter was settled, until I got another message from him. It said, “Look it up un the dictionary.” Yes, he said “un.” Had he not even glanced at the dictionary link I had taken the trouble to send him?
I was tempted to write him and tell him that if he was going to anoint himself grammar rule Nazi, perhaps he should first learn what the rules are and practice spelling his prepositions correctly.
But I decided not to waste any more of my time arguing with him. Unfollowing and blocking him brought me some satisfaction, but the fact remained: for a time, I had been taken in.
Granted, not everyone who criticizes my writing is a troll. I have made plenty of writing errors in my lifetime and will certainly make more, but if I am doing something egregiously wrong grammar-wise, I want to know about it so that I can start doing it correctly.
Right after I saw the first message I could not be sure my critic was not only trying to help. But his second response, “Look it up un the dictionary” revealed that he had either not bothered to look at my link, or he was only trying to provoke me.
Either way, he had tried to pull me into his game and I had let him. How could I? Every time I have ever responded to a troll, the experience has been unrewarding. On Reddit, I encountered a few trolls. One of them, after reading my most popular post on getting past block, accused me of being a know-nothing writer who had devised a dubious writing “system” for the purpose of amassing wealth.
What I have learned from the trolls I have encountered is that, whether they are right or wrong, they will always have the last word because they enjoy strife. If they made you mad once, why, they can do it again. A troll does not appear to care about being right.
A troll wants to put people on the defensive. For someone to “defend” herself against a troll puts the troll in a position of power. The game is as un-winnable as a Vegas slot machine because the troll has created it for his own purposes.
So why did I respond? For one thing, I like to be right and if I can prove it, so much the better. And when my ego is under attack, I feel driven to defend it.
My experience made me realize that my fear of being wrong is an exploitable weakness. What if I had used “entitled” incorrectly? Would my mistake have been scandalous? Marked me as a bad writer? Besides, what kind of person patrols Twitter in order to police grammar rule violations?
That I make mistakes; that I am not as polished, complete, or knowledgeable as I would like to appear are traits I might like to hide but they are not scandalous, yet a troll can make them seem that way. But do I need to argue in order to defend my honor to a stranger?
What has always made the “never feed a troll” advice confusing for me is there are similar situations where retaliating is sometimes the most effective response. Fighting a schoolyard bully may stop the abuse, since bullies tend to go after those who are reluctant to defend themselves. However, there are big differences between schoolyard bullies and trolls.
A bullied student is forced by law to be around the aggressors for a number of hours each day. Ignoring them is not an option. On-line trolls are far easier to ignore. On Twitter you can even block them.
Another difference is that trolls can hide behind anonymity, whereas bullies have to perform their actions as themselves and are thus vulnerable to personal consequences.
Other than bullying, trolling reminds me of heckling. Comedians are judged by their ability to adroitly counter-attack a heckler while preserving the comedic atmosphere, and if they become flustered, their performance fizzles.
But an internet troll lacks the power to humiliate someone in front of a live crowd. A troll is not a playground bully, nor a heckler. A troll oozes faceless from the void of cyberspace, drops an un-winnable game in front of the potential victim, and makes the first upsetting move in the hope that his chosen “opponent” will want to prevail.
A troll can be and should be ignored. Once you respond, the troll has scored a major point and the angrier your response, the more the troll is rewarded.
A troll manipulates emotions and drains energy. Instead of arguing with a troll I could be creating characters for my next novel, playing “The Legend of Zelda,” or immersing myself in a Ray Bradbury novel. Trolling is only beneficial to the troll, and I have concluded that the conventional wisdom is correct: Do not feed trolls.
Better to watch them with detached amusement as they flail their arms and flash their teeth until they drop back into the cyber-muck from which they sprang.