A Few Good Trolls

Mon Oct 27, 2014 at 06:17 AM PDT
A Few Good Trolls


Central Question: How do we engage with reactionary movements? (Warning: this discusses the Tea Party and #GamerGate—both are noxious, but the latter ought to come with a trigger warning because #GamerGate.)

On the 17th of December in 1773, George Hewes smeared coal dust on his face, dressed up as an Indian, and threw tea into Boston Harbor. “I have never gotten over,” writes Garret Keizer in Harper’s, “the notion that the history of the United States begins with an act of masquerade.” I haven’t, either: men dressed as Mohawks, wielding hatchets, shouting huzzahs and storming ships.

The earnestness — the almost-innocence — of that scene is mirrored in those today who call themselves Tea Partiers, who don tricorn hats and drape them with tea bags. If you can put aside the reactionary politics, there’s something almost sweet about them in their blessed naïvety.

And in our post-post-everything moment, we laugh — which is probably a good thing. When discourse breaks (and make no mistake, it’s broken), there’s little left but to troll. I love the flippancy of the word troll: monosyllabic and compact. Sometimes we don’t feed them. Sometimes we make acrostics out of BENGHAZI and @ mention prominent conservatives.

But I have to remind myself that the Internet is a dangerous place.

When Anita Sarkeesian was driven out of her home, I didn’t call them trolls; when men threaten rape, they are not trolls. The word is too diminutive, and we ought not be flippant about what happened to Sarkeesian. We ought not be flippant about what happens to women when they wander down the back alleys of the Internet.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/10/27/1339473/-A-Few-Good-Trolls