About ten years ago, I had experience with trolls before they were ‘trolls.’ Well, they were still trolls, but the word ‘troll’ didn’t have the same social capital or specter of international conspiracy behind it like it does now.
Back then, there weren’t sophisticated networks of intentionally-groomed and deeply-financed college-going neo-conservative wannabe-journalist political operatives spreading propaganda while screaming “Free Speech and Capitalism!” and bullying others online who speak with a shred of human empathy. Trolls certainly weren’t politically-targeted Russian bots trying to stoke bipartisan vitriol across global social media platforms to undermine democracy.
Much like the trolls of today, what got written in the comments section was still any combination of dumb, mean, misinformed, and/or arrogant, but at least it felt like there was an isolated dumb, mean, misinformed, and/or arrogant human person behind it. (Ahh, the beginning days of social media…)
I was in my early twenties when I started receiving unsolicited “feedback” and “input” from faceless strangers with strong opinions.
Given the content I share has almost always centered on philosophical concepts that help me make sense of myself and the world, the most uninspired comments have frequently centered on my looks or been flippant bits of anti-intellectualism.
To be fair, many strangers’ comments were surprisingly thoughtful and delightfully encouraging (even if we didn’t always agree on things), but those are the sort of comments we hope to inspire through online discourse and digital learning communities. In fact, some of those strangers have turned into long-time friendly connections, and we continue to be in touch. Hi, friends!
Those friendly strangers are decidedly not the folks who dwell in the toxic recesses of trollish havens online.
It’s a different sort of person all together who feels so entitled, bold, and uninhibited to sling insults, hint veiled threats, or share weird and gross things in comments, like how they want to rub their dick on your neck. (For real, someone said that. On a philosophy video!)
I remember assuming it was generally understood that online haters were (for the most part) just sad or angry people – mostly white men, though not exclusively – who felt strangely compelled to colonize yet another “newfound territory” – the comments section – with poorly formed arguments and incomplete sentences to project and externalize their own unprocessed negative feelings. (This is probably still a fairly accurate description of many a human troll who roams the Internet today. They are a sad and pained bunch who also need healing, and I worry about them for all sorts of reasons.)
Nevertheless, the recognition that someone actually took time to read/watch/skim/not-really-engage-at-all-with whatever you put out into the digital ether, and then decided to further extend themselves by writing their own words on top of your content is part of what makes the scary, gross, dumb, and threatening things people say online even more scary, gross, dumb, and threatening.
People deliberately go out of their way to direct a range of useless to horrible things at someone they don’t know without doing the real work of critically thinking about if, why, or how they disagree or see the world differently.
But no matter who you are or how thick a skin you develop, when you read such things, they can bother you at some level. Especially because – sometimes – someone will leave a comment that feels a little more personal, a little more pointed, as if a stranger actually studied your insecurities in order to know precisely how to make you feel small.
The nature of what makes one comment sting a little more than others is probably different for everyone, but when it happens, it delivers its own kind of unsettling pain.
For me, among the many comments I’ve received from strangers online, there is just one comment that actually stuck in a bad way:
“You are undoubtedly the most self-centered and self-indulgent person imaginable.”
Or something like that.
I don’t remember exactly what they said or if it was punctuated with other sentiments (it probably was), but I don’t care to search my old posts and videos to find out either. It doesn’t really matter what they said in particular anyway. What does matter is that, for some reason, this comment landed in a way that buried deep and stayed.
I’m inclined to assume this comment bothered me, and continues to, because somewhere deep down, I believe it may be true.
If I’m being really honest, I’ve actually let this stranger’s comment continue to exercise some power over me, too. I didn’t know this person and they didn’t know me, but what they said has contributed to my reluctance to write for years, and whenever I feel inspired to write publicly, it echoes somewhere in the back of my mind and ushers in a hazy cloud of self-doubt. Because I’ve continued to worry…
What if it is true?
For all the years I’ve been studying and teaching and writing and sharing bits of philosophy and theory in classes, essays, videos, and casual (to me) conversations, I’ve done so simply because these things literally transformed me, and the potential they may do the same for others has always been compelling. Kind of like when you taste a dish so good you want everyone around you to try a bite just in case they might enjoy the taste of being changed, too. It’s with that same appreciation, enthusiasm, and pleasure that I wish to share the people, books, and ideas that have changed my life with others. Does rooting these things in my own experience make me self-centered? Self-indulgent?
For the past six years or so as my public writing practice has waned and waned some more, I’ve repeatedly tried to get myself back into it yet consistently stalled out. Even with an incredibly generous community of colleagues, friends, and former students who extend ample support and patient encouragement whenever I echo the same tired refrain, “I want to focus more on writing,” I have yet to bring myself to actually do it, at least in ways that feel open, authentic, and intended to be shared with others.
I find myself in that place again, wanting to focus more on writing (always), and specifically writing pieces about my personal experiences as they have been illuminated for me through the lens of feminist theory and social justice. But now, I fully recognize how the worry that I am self-centered and self-indulgent in doing so holds me back. It shows up in negative self-talk, doubt, judgment, shame, and fear, and I attach to statements like:
- What I want to write will be written just for me and no one else will want to read it (which, according to every how-to-become-a-writer advice column, is basically the single worst transgression an aspiring writer could make). Therefore, this is selfish, self-centered, and self-indulgent.
- What I want to write will be too personal – it will reveal too much of my own story, or perhaps someone else’s. That’s probably unhealthy for me and others, if not unethical.
- What I want to write will be too much, too long, and too disjointed to be interesting, helpful, or even make sense to anyone else. If people can’t make sense of it, then why bother?
- What I want to write will demand time and energy away from other things, but what I write won’t amount to anything anyway, so it will all be a waste of time and energy, and ultimately not worth the effort.
- What I want to write won’t be what I end up prioritizing in my writing (because I’m actually too afraid to be vulnerable through writing), so I’ll just keep writing stuff that isn’t even important or meaningful to me, which will likely come off as inauthentic and insincere. This is decidedly NOT what I wish to do, so I will feel ever more disappointed, frustrated, and “clogged up” through the process.
- What I want to write might actually be dumb, ignorant, inadvertently arrogant (or generally not age well). That would be harmful and hurtful to others, and potentially very embarrassing and difficult for me to bear. Perhaps it’s best to not risk it, for the sake of everyone.
- What I want to write still won’t result in the type of embodied practice of feminist friendship I’ve been exploring and wanting to share, because maybe it can’t actually be done through writing at all. So it may be a good idea, but if I can’t even figure out how to do it, then there’s little point in simply continuing to describe and talk about it.
I’m still working through these things. Clearly.
But I’m writing about all of this now because I realize that a stranger said something I believed about myself and it still affects me. It holds me back, and I don’t want it to anymore. Indeed, that was the intended effect behind the comment all along. But I’m also writing about this because one way to diffuse the negative power of a shadowy self is to shine a light on it. So, here’s some light to help me better see myself.
Rather than being ashamed of my process, I am reclaiming it as my process.
I never presumed the unique intertwining of my own life and philosophy (my ‘philifesophy’) would be appealing or helpful to everyone, even if I hoped and believed it could be interesting to other people. But I am sure of one thing – it is meaningful to someone.
It’s meaningful to me.
At the very least, I have my own experience to validate that. Sharing aspects of what I’m thinking and learning and feeling is part of my process of learning and growing, too.
I don’t want to be afraid to share these things any more. And yes, selfishly, I’m tired of holding them in my body, the hundreds of pages of my notebooks. They don’t have a neat order and often times are repetitive and expansive, but one day I could die unexpectedly and dead-me will be really sad if I didn’t manage to get anything out when I had the chance.
This post is an invitation for myself to lean in and trust the process, to shed the things that have held me back, and to be open to new things that could come out of sharing new thoughts in new ways. For anyone who reads along, I sincerely hope you get something out of it, too.
But I’m not writing solely for you.
When I sit to write, I channel Gloria Anzaldúa when she explained that the reason why she writes is “to become more intimate with myself and you.” If somehow, a deeper sense of intimacy and understanding develops within either you or me – for or about any of us – then that will be a good thing.