5 reasons why ‘don’t feed the trolls’ and ‘block and report’ isn't doing us any favours
On this International Women’s Day, I’m sharing my personal experience as a woman being the target of online abuse - an experience all too common. In the UK, half of girls reported being bullied/abused online, as did nearly a quarter of women surveyed in 8 countries, and an 11-year study found that women were the target in 72% of online harassment cases. I hope that my own shared experience will help others who have experienced this behaviour to not feel so alone, and that those around them will be able to understand the best way to support them.
When I ran my December campaign to try to raise awareness of the NEST Social Code and encourage adoption, I got my first NEST-related hate mail, as well as finding NEST the subject of a Reddit thread where some people tore apart and made fun of the Code and the ideas behind it – and in a more menacing turn, tried to find out who was behind this project. When I told my friends what was happening, many of their replies were the typical well-intentioned responses I’m sure you’ve heard before:
“Ignore them. They’ll eventually find someone else to pester.”
“Don’t feed the trolls! They’re only looking for attention.”
“Block and report - it’s the best way to deal with this stuff”
It’s the classic advice - do a search for how to deal with trolls and you’ll find a dozen websites issuing this kind of standard response, including many of the online platforms themselves, like Twitter or Instagram. So why isn’t this necessarily helping things?
1. Ignoring something doesn’t make it go away
Street art photo courtesy of Thomas Hawk
The subtext to the first piece of advice above – that they’ll move on to bother someone else – is exactly my problem with this. By not calling out the behaviour as bad, we give tacit permission for it to continue. Maybe not to me, but to someone else - maybe even someone who’s not able to deal with it as well.
When I read in the news recently about anti-Semitic graffiti, I was struck by the similarity between this real world hatespeech and the online version. Letting bad behaviour or comments go unchecked in the online world is the equivalent of letting Nazi symbols and hateful words stay spray painted on the walls. We can’t imagine telling the shop owners to just ignore those words/symbols of hatespeech painted on their walls, but the exact opposite appears to be true online.
And if we leave such comments visible but unchecked, the lingering impression can be one of downplaying the voices that matter, while giving a platform to those that abuse. Using blocking/muting can make the nasty stuff invisible to you, but not to others who come along to the conversation without blocking in place. To a third party, your voice can appear to be drowned out by a huge volume of negative/abusive comments that you will never even see, since they’re blocked to you but not everyone else.
2. Ignoring something doesn’t undo the damage
You can’t un-feel something, especially something negative that’s aimed personally at you, usually targeting a sensitive issue. Telling someone to ignore it isn’t going to take away the pain that’s already been inflicted. I’m reminded of my school years, when teachers told me to ignore the boys that teased me. Guess what? I can still remember their taunts, and I can still feel the impact on my body image and my self-esteem many, many years later.
It’s not really possible to ignore something hurtful, no matter how hard we may try. Even tiny daggers can cut deep.
3. It puts the responsibility for dealing with the problem on the victim
Block and report is often reeled out as a panacea, but why should the victim of the bad behaviour be the one who has to physically do something to try to stop it? And when the advice is to ignore, it’s still putting the onus on the victim to do something to look after themselves, rather than offering real support. In my case (and those of countless other women), why should the woman be the one to have to curtail her words/behaviour, to make herself smaller online? As Chloe Bryan put it so eloquently:
“Ultimately, it’s a framing issue: we as a culture put the impetus to improve a toxic situation on the victim.”
Don’t get me wrong - blocking and reporting can be a good tactic for someone’s mental health. I agree with Lara Witt’s excellent article calling blocking an act of self-care - especially for women of colour, and I have done it myself. But looking at the bigger picture, blocking isn’t much more than a nod of sympathy or small mechanism of self preservation for the target of abuse/harassment. While blocking does at least stop the victim from witnessing their own harassment or abuse in that instance, it doesn’t remove the posts entirely, nor does it do anything to stop the abuser/harasser. I’m not saying don’t do it, I’m just saying that it’s not the ultimate solution.
4. They’ll just set up another account and continue
The main reason I think ‘block and report’ isn’t a good solution is because it just doesn’t work. It’s free and easy to set up multiple accounts, so blocking and reporting one account does nothing to stop the person’s bad behaviour, even if the report is successful in getting the account banned. Besides, Instagram has publicly stated that they are focusing their abuse-patrolling efforts on accounts with the highest volume of comments, and I can think of dozens (if not hundreds) of instances where people on Twitter have had their reports of abuse ignored. So unless you’re internet famous (and even if you are), reporting is a lottery - one where the offender can just get another route to attack instantly.
5. The attention the trolls want isn’t your/my attention anyway
I’m sure that whatever troll sent me the hatemail or started the Reddit thread that prompted this blog post really doesn’t give a crap about what I think of them. I think Ragen Chastain sums it up best:
“[Don’t feed the trolls] is predicated on the idea that the trolls are looking for the attention of their victim and their victim’s allies, which isn’t always the case. All too often, the trolls—especially those who are organized in dedicated troll forums—are looking for approval from each other.”
Image courtesy of @Femmefeministe - do follow :-)
She goes on to mention trolls taking screenshots of drafts of their comments - comments that were never made public due to moderation - and sharing the screenshots with fellow trolls. Laura Bates, founder of the brilliant website Everyday Sexism states in this Vogue article that the worst online abuse that she receives is in her emails, not on a public platform (and my own personal experience backs this up). Lara Witt aka @Femmefeministe has even shared screenshots of trolls engaging in this behaviour.
For the trolls, it’s not even necessarily about getting the spotlight or getting a rise out of their opponent; it’s often just a sad, lonely or angry person seeking validation from their peers, not from you.
So, what can we do? If ignoring, blocking and reporting isn’t the answer, what is?
I wish I were able to finish off this post with a simple solution that would solve everything, but I can’t. Until such time as every comment posted on the internet has to be approved by someone’s mother before appearing (haha), or until the online platforms start taking the problem seriously and throwing some proper resources at tackling it, there is no solution that will address the problem en masse. And since every person and every situation is different, there will never be a one-size-fits-all solution. So that means (to me anyway) the one-size-fits-all advice listed at the start of this post isn’t necessarily helping. Here are 5 alternate suggestions:
1. Listen, believe, and offer your support
If you know someone being targeted with abuse/harassment, rather than offering the standard block/ignore advice, consider offering some support. Support can mean listening to them vent some steam, offering to rally the troops around them online to drown out the offending voice, or sharing the story of what’s happening with others or authorities so they don’t have to relive the experience. Ask the person how you can help them through this situation, and perhaps even suggest specific actions that you’re willing and able to do. Sometimes it’s not easy for someone to ask for help or to even know what to ask for; it’s often much easier to respond to an offer of help. And even if they choose not to take you up on it, I’m sure the gesture will be appreciated.
As Willie Jackson II put it: be an accomplice, not an ally. Allies are passive; accomplices take action.
2. Understand who and what you’re dealing with
I highly recommend reading Ragen Chastain’s guide to understanding and dealing with online trolls and the Vivian Abraham guide to troll tactics, even if you’ve never been on the receiving end of troll activity - we could all use more accomplices :-). You may also find these personal stories of dealing with trolls to be helpful and/or inspirational - I did.
Understanding the psychology behind it all helped me to depersonalise the experience. Once you start seeing it as a predictable pattern of behaviour from someone desperate for validation, rather than an intimate personal attack, it helps to alleviate some of the darker emotions.
3. Do feed the trolls… just not troll food
If you witness online harassment, instead of expecting the person experiencing the abuse to handle things on their own, consider calling it out - if and only if you feel safe doing so, and ideally in such a way that doesn’t stir things up further. I totally get the idea that you’ll never be able to reason with a troll, but my own personal experience shows that a single voice of reason (particularly not the initial target) can in fact shut down the conversation, and there are countless Twitter threads about how allies/accomplices have stepped in and defused a situation, both online and in the real world. Sure, getting a troll to admit they were wrong is definitely an edge case, but deflating an argument with kindness or humor, unmasking/debunking/outwitting a troll or simply drowning out their negativity with a tidal wave of positivity can eliminate the troll’s power.
“I am also a fan of calling out abuse rather than just ignoring it. It is not difficult to be cleverer and funnier than a troll.”
4. Respect the person’s decision to handle things the way they want to
If someone chooses to engage with a troll, don’t tell them off for doing so, even if things escalated or didn’t go the way they had hoped. Sometimes the very act of standing up to an aggressor can feel empowering, regardless of the outcome. Even if you yourself wouldn’t react that way, it doesn’t make the other person’s decision any less valid.
If the person chooses to block and report, or to retweet & “shame” them, that’s absolutely their right, too - and they don’t owe you any explanation. If you offer help and the person says they’d rather move on instead, it’s their choice to pick their battles.
“Anyone who tells you you’re reacting ‘wrongly’ should be focusing on the perpetrator, not the victim. Ultimately, of course, I hope that we can stop the problem at the source, rather than teaching women how to cope with it.”
5. Lobby the platforms or regulators for better online protection
The only way we’ll ever get a better mechanism than block & report is if we all push for change. Twitter made a big fuss about their automated troll filters back in 2018, but I’m not sure it’s helped things that much. And it can’t be left entirely up to the platforms to self-regulate; we’ve got to push governments and collectively pull whatever levers we can to shine a light on the importance of this issue. When 29% of the victims of online harassment state that they fear for their lives, it’s time for us all to push for better online protection.
P.S. It probably goes without saying, but this blog is subject to the NEST Social Code of Conduct and the moderators reserve the right to remove any comment and/or report any threats or crimes.
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