- Share This Post
- submit
- 11
-
Sparkle (0)
There are some people in this world we find annoying. There are others who we find distasteful. There are still others who we find repugnant.
Beyond that, there is the troll.
Jay Allen of The Daily Journey and Vox knows a little something about trolls.
"Trolls are as old as the internet. For those who are lucky enough to have never run across one, they are little people who seem to have nothing better to do than argue ceaselessly and illogically about the topic at hand. They will do anything to engage anyone in their abyss of words for it is the only attention they really ever receive. Because of this, trolls are usually very bitter and angry and have little self-respect."
In the Blogosphere, trolls tend to leave incendiary comments and often return to make sure they've wrought damage, adding additional comments like fuel to a fire. So what do you do if a troll stops by your blog? Do you out them or ignore them? I've seen mommybloggers deal with trolls in various ways:
Back in February, Melissa of Suburban Bliss had a particuarly offensive troll who left comments about the state of her marriage. Melissa publicly outed her and then debated on whether or not she should allow comments at all on her blog. She decided to allow comments from those with Typekey accounts and to have her husband screen them first:
"I've decided to follow the advice of some nice person and I'm changing my settings (which I wanted to do for a while but couldn't figure out. I'm very smart.) so that you have to have a Typekey account to comment (it takes literally two seconds to set up) and I'm having Logan confirm or delete comments.
So don't send along nasty comments because I won't be reading them. Perhaps someday I'll be able to read the ugly things without having a massive come apart but for now, I'm just not mature enough I suppose."
Elizabeth of Table for Five recently wrote about the death of her mother-in-law, who was an alcoholic and whose self-destructive behavior took its toll on the family. A troll left Elizabeth a comment and Elizabeth just couldn't leave it alone. Unable to let the troll know how she felt because the troll had left a phony email address, she posted her email to the troll on her blog:
If you read my When life gives you lemons post, you’ll find a comment from MissA in which she suggests that it is wrong of me to feel what I feel and that I didn’t care about my mother in law. I tried to send MissA an email discussing it with her, but surprise surprise-the I.P. address is spoofed and the email is fake. Something about knowing that I was writing to a stranger brought out some deep feelings, so I’m going to post the email I wrote here. You don’t have to read it, or comment on it, this is one of those posts that is just to get something off of one’s chest.
I recently wrote a post ranting about my day with two toddlers and not enough patience. Anonymous left a comment for me that called me on my shit and which I completely understood was valid feedback. I acknowledged her comment and moved on.
Not so fast! Other commenters (those who know me and who comment with their names) replied to her and a tiny war broke out in my comments section. I was both flattered and appalled.
But what I was confused about was my role as the blogger. How do I handle this person? I have no problem with somebody criticizing me or my writing, but when she started criticizing my friends... that left a bad taste in my mouth.
Melissa's troll apparently didn't realize that most bloggers have the ability to determine who is visiting their blogs. Elizabeth's troll left a comment with a false IP address. My troll left a comment without leaving her name. Of course, I know where she came from but I decided that it was an isolated incident and I chose to ignore her. I left her comments--I believe they are an important part of the dialogue that resulted from that post--however, if she visits again, maybe then I'll look into banning her IP address.
Is there an Internet protocol for dealing with trolls? What do you do?
- Ban their IP address?
- Blog about them in hopes that public humiliation (and
