AND THEN IT HIT ME

Tractors, toddlers, & internet trolls

I just had a dream in which I understood God to be a tractor. The Great Tractor moved through a field in front of me, neither planting nor harvesting, rolling slowly in silhouette across the sun. Unfortunately, the great, benevolent machine offered no advice re: internet trolls.

Like most people most of the time, I have recently witnessed suboptimal behavior on social media. I have struggled with whether to try and grind the offending comments to grist in a blaze of fierce but compassionate rhetoric (somehow I have never yet managed that one), disapprove tepidly in a mediocre game of word-twister (a somewhat common project), or snivel off stage left with a heart full of stifled, righteous rage (the usual).

In the absence of any guidance from the tractor in the field of the sky, I’m left, as usual, to consider what I can learn from living with toddlers. Who better to instruct us in the arts of poor behavior than two-and-a-half-year-olds?

When my children engage in hitting, there are a few things I might usually say:

1) No hitting. This one is handy because it’s plain, quick, and clear. Both its utility and its weakness lies in that it fails to name a subject—the connection between a self and the behavior is absent.

2) We do not hit. This one’s strength is that it implies a group and appeals to the child’s (TOO SLOWLY) developing sense of belonging and respect for the power of community. The main weaknesses is that the child may not particularly care what the group does or does not condone.

3)  Mama doesn’t like it when you hit her. This one is weird; the curious third-person seems to be something we use around young kids frequently. I imagine this has to do with accessibility—perhaps it’s easier to approach the figure of “Mama” like a friendly puppet than to imagine a parent as a whole-ass separate human with her own needs and desires.

4) I don’t like it when you hit me. Lately, this one gets my kids’ attention, especially when I do it in a calm, understated way and move on. And yet it’s the one I use the least. Being sparing with it is probably a good instinct, since I don’t want to wear out a trump card, or emphasize personal preference when the behavior needs to be understood as universally discouraged.

When people are being less than gallant online, many of us who would stay their hands tend towards the “We do not hit” or the “Mama doesn’t like it when you hit her” approach, either stating what we personally value as what everyone should value, or dressing our individual discomfort in the clothes of injury to humanity in general. This makes sense, given that we want to appeal to the larger group, the greater good, etc. It also doesn’t work.

I’m not saying that anything especially does, or that you should join me in the folly of spending yourself on how to respond to people who are, for whatever reasons, dabbling in troll-dom. However, I have had some small pieces of luck with the “I don’t like it when you hit me” and the “no hitting” approaches, both of which have been informative interior practices as well.

“I don’t like it when you hit me” is tough in the sense that you have to work extra hard not to sound whiny. But it seems that the direct connection espoused by this strategy is something of an anti-venom to online foolery (if you know the person who is behaving poorly). The trick I have found is to do it directly, in a personal message. I try to speak plainly and honestly but without rancor—sort of the digital equivalent of looking someone in the eye.

The work of a direct message is not performative, nor even particularly persuasive. Its goal is to deliver, quickly and candidly, something to the effect that “these recent words you chose seemed very poorly considered to me, and it’s your prerogative to say them, but I wish you wouldn’t.”

Responses I’ve gotten include 1) “Oh, I didn’t know I sounded like that, sorry” and 2) no personal reply (that’s a lot of vulnerability to expect from someone who’s in a place where flinging sand in the sandbox seems like a good option— and don’t get me wrong, I’ve BEEN THERE) but the offensive comments were, one by one, quietly deleted and/or amended to sound, and become, more civil. It’s a small thing, but then, so is the piriformis muscle, and it can ruin your life if you don’t stretch it.

As far as “no hitting” goes, I think the occasional efficacy here has to do, once again, with plainness, but this time, also more clearly with self-valuation. If you feel good about yourself, you generally don’t have to yell at people; likewise, if you even appear to feel confident, it’s slightly less likely that people will mess with you (also relevant in the land of toddlers). So a cut-and-dried “please don’t speak to me like that” can have a place, when you judge that the person you’re addressing hasn’t succumbed entirely to the manic undertow of troll-dom.

Just as with kids, though, there is really no right way to approach online hostility. Despite my best efforts, I’m someone who tends to imagine, even if mostly subconsciously, that there are “bad” and “good” ways to do things, and that I am either succeeding or failing. What this labeling does, as so many binaries do, is limit my ability to move freely. Yes, I crave certainty, but I also hanker for freedom, fluidity, and movement. (Maybe that’s why I’m training for an ultramarathon, against what would otherwise be my better judgment.) It seems sensible, then, to remain improvisational, sometimes trying one thing, other times trying another thing, and leaving the option to take a pass open.

And yet: none of this is really about managing another person. We can’t, ultimately, do that. We can finesse interactions, guide them, and work for more fruitful engagement and less harm. On a good day, you can help a toddler slow an impulse enough to prevent real hurt; on a great day, the kid does it himself.

Most days, though—just as what I’m trying to facilitate inside my children will hopefully take the shape of personal accountability and interior buoyancy—the real work is helping myself move towards the place where I don’t feel I need to yell or strike at others.

Most days, the job is to be gentle with myself, because that’s when I’m able to look up, to notice that the field, perhaps with a huge tractor crossing it steadily towards the sun, is far wider than I’d thought. When I’m generous with myself, I can see that there are many more acres in which to run than I had imagined. Look what’s growing in them already—with, and without, my help.