Abstract
ILLUSTRATION: Brian John Spencer
What happens when aggressive, nameless social media users meet face to face?
“Hello Colin,” everyone replied.
“Welcome to the Wednesday night meeting of Trolls Anonymous. In Trolls Anonymous we believe that by sharing our hope and experience we can help each other to lead a troll-free life. Is there anyone who would like to start the meeting?”
“Yes, please. My name’s Ian and I’m a troll.”
“Hi Ian.”
“This is very difficult for me to share, but I’m afraid I’ve had a relapse since last week. I still don’t really know what went wrong. One moment I was just sitting at home reading an article about some woman Labour MP who was getting death threats and I was even beginning to feel some sympathy for her. Then it was like a switch clicked in my brain and the next thing I knew I had logged in to my Twitter account @KeepBritain_English and had sent this woman a tweet saying, ‘Stop the War or die, you bitch’. Before I knew it, several hours had passed and I was busy insulting all Muslims and had received a death threat myself from @Israel4Allah.”
“Thank you for sharing that, Ian. Can anyone identify with Ian?”
“My name’s Barry and I’m a troll.”
“Hi Barry.”
“I wasn’t actually going to say anything tonight, but Ian’s sharing has made me want to speak. Over the six months I’ve been coming to TA, Ian and I have become really good friends and every Saturday night we go off down to the pub together but it’s only now that I’ve come to realise he’s @KeepBritain_English. I feel really guilty about this because I am @Israel4Allah and every time he slips out to the toilet, his is one of the Twitter accounts I love to troll. As soon as he leaves the bar, I just can’t help myself. I get out my phone and tweet the most obscene things that come to mind followed by #gobacktowhereyoucamefromyouNazifuck #genderfluidrefugee. When Ian comes back from the lav I pretend I’ve just been checking the football scores on my phone and then we go back to talking about the government’s mishandling of the junior doctor’s strike. So I’d like to take this opportunity to say sorry.”
“That’s a very brave thing of you to share, Barry,” said Colin. “Maybe it would be a good idea if you could both help one another to delete your Twitter accounts. Now I see we have a newcomer in the room. Is there anything you would like to say?
“I’m @TheRealDonaldTrump.”
“I’m sorry @TheRealDonaldTrump, but we don’t use Twitter handles in the room. At Trolls Anonymous we only believe in certain levels of anonymity. So perhaps you could introduce yourself using your real first name.”
“Hi, I’m Donald.”
“And do you identify yourself as a troll?”
“Hell no. I identify myself as the next president of the USA. That Hillary Clinton is the She-Devil incarnate. What she needs is a good nuking from President Putin who definitely is not in the Ukraine, hell no. Keep America for the Americans. Build a wall along the Mexican border to keep out them scrounging narco Latinos out. Bomb somewhere, anywhere – now…’
“Er, thank you for sharing, Donald. Keep coming back. It works if you work it.”