My mother spent at least 12 months anticipating the joy of life when I would learn to talk and truly communicate. However, when I could finally string together a sentence and began delivering demands with the sarcasm of a fed-up 40-year-old combined with the sass and audacity of a toddler, she wished that she could put the genie back in the bottle. Or perhaps make a different decision about having a child.
This is how I feel about social media. The best part about it is that it has enabled everyone to have a voice. That’s also the worst part. Did everybody NEED a voice? Especially if they were going to use it merely to criticize the voices of others? That seems counterintuitive to me, but nobody asked me. And again, I should have never been encouraged to speak.
I’ve decided that content creators are among the bravest souls in our society.
No matter how benign or lovely a person is, or irrespective of the helpful information that he/she provides, there’s always a critic. For example, I love Nara Smith, whom I follow on TikTok (she also has a substack!), and she has been the recent target of so much criticism. Whether or not you like her style or question her decision to have three children before the age of 22, you HAVE to respect a woman who makes cereal from scratch to feed her very beautiful family. Yet, every day there are people who drop into her comments on TikTok to leave nastygrams about her Mormonism, children’s names or being a trad wife. My hope is that she’s laughing all the way to bank with her nearly 5M followers, and making homemade mozzarella cheese for her gorgeous husband and kids, completely unbothered.
One of my other most frequently visited content creators IS bothered, and periodically screenshots and publicly shares the vitriol that trolls deposit into her comments or DMs. It’s usually something charming, like: “your fat and desevre to die [sic]” or “your husband is gonna leave you.” Really, people?
So, aside from the fact that these trolls should dedicate more time and attention to learning to spell and construct sentences, I’m curious about the source of their anger and their end game. Are they jealous? Is the goal to inspire suicide? I don’t get it. Do they wake up every day and think “who am I going to shit on today?” Because that’s how it seems. And it sounds like a miserable existence.
Can they find it in their stony little hearts to just keep scrolling without banging out an insult? Or maybe just contain their comments to their private social groups?
In retaliation to the epidemic of Troll Culture, I have been decidedly hyper-positive in my comments, should I decide to remark on social media. If a woman looks pretty, I’m going to tell her. If I think someone’s doing a great job, I’ma let them know. If I haven’t seen a friend in a while, I’m going to slide into his/her DMs and tell them to have a great day.
To be clear, this is uncharacteristic of me, as I’m known more for my acerbic nature. I am also prone to excessive shit-talking (thus this forum). But despite my pragmatism, I don’t operate with the goal of making people feel like shit, whether or not I agree with their life choices.
Now . . . will any of these people GAF about my warm fuzzies? Who knows? Am I on Nara Smith’s or any of my other favorite influencers’ radars as a beacon of positivity? I’m pretty sure they don’t care. But I’m hoping that maybe some of my comments will counter the negativity and cushion the blows of assholes who have nothing better to do.
I’m going to take this a step further and assert that trolls are part of the reason that serious political candidates — like, people who might actually do some good for society — decline to run for office.
Perhaps would-be candidates are deterred by the potential for public scrutiny by people who do absolutely nothing but sit in their armchairs, contributing nothing to society, except for when it comes time to investigate and check the tweets of candidates from 15 years ago for disparaging remarks which could be their political undoing. I can’t help thinking we’re missing out.
Maybe we should use the lessons learned in childhood. If you don’t have anything nice to say . . .
I’ll be damned if trolls aren’t making me a nicer person.
It’s always shocking to me how mean people are in comments. I can’t imagine waking up and deciding to go online and tear people apart. It’s easy to hide behind a computer, I guess!