The thing I like most about the internet is that it’s just humans, interacting with other humans – but in a sufficiently novel manner for new guidelines to be needed. Because there’s no one in charge – no, despite the claims of thousands of teenage boys, “King Of The Internet” – online is a world where billions of people are trying to get through another day of posting amusing pictures of cats, typing in capital letters and lying slightly about how amazing they are, all while not getting in each other’s way or offending each other.
By and large, it works so well as to stir the heart. Observed from above, the internet must look like the Magic Roundabout gyratory system in Swindon: trillions of opinion-cars from all over the world, ploughing into what seems like certain fatality – only for everyone to avoid each other and seamlessly continue their journey to Bristol/some pornography. No international wars have ever been declared on the internet. It is a remarkably amiable place.
But there are exceptions. “Trolls”: anonymous posters whose kink is making inflammatory comments – then getting visibly high off others’ outrage. Imagine an adolescent boy breaking wind at the breakfast table – then smirking as everyone shouts, “Jesus, that smell has irradiated my Wheatos. Why? WHY would you DO that, Julian, WHY?”
Typical troll behaviour would be, say, going on a Beyoncé fan-site, observing the conversation, and saying, “Yeah – but she’s got a fat arse, hasn’t she?” As inexperienced fans castigate the troll for sexism, possible racism and stupidity, older hands utter one of the internet’s most used catchphrases: “Don’t feed the troll.” In other words: if some anonymous armchair cowboy pitches up and deliberately provokes a fight, don’t satisfy their need for attention. Ignore them. Don’t feed the troll.
Until recently, I, too, would intone, “Don’t feed the troll.” Firstly, it’s a waste of time that could be spent engaging in a pleasant early-summer stroll, searching out the first buds of pussy-willow. And, secondly, there’s always the undeniable feeling that, as you castigate a troll, he’s rubbing his Red Dwarf mouse-mat against his crotch and sighing, “Angry liberal women typing at me. Oh yah. That’s how I like it.”
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But then I started to notice that, as a phenomenon, trolling isn’t just confined to pseudonymous IT workers hanging around Justin Bieber fan-sites, making 14-year-old girls furious. When, on Top Gear, Jeremy Clarkson made his “amusing” remark about Katie Price having a “pink whore’s box” – “I meant PINK HORSE BOX!” he corrected, knowingly – it occurred to me that Clarkson’s entire career is essentially an exercise in trolling: gleefully vexatious comments on Mexicans, homosexuals and women, thrown out with the, “Ho ho! Our ‘PC’ friends won’t like THIS!” expression that is the carat-mark of the true troll.
Clarkson isn’t the only professional troll on the block: consider his friend, the Sunday Times columnist A.A. Gill, with his liberal sprinkling of references to “dykes”, “ferret-faced Albanians” and the “ugly Welsh”. Both Clarkson and Gill know that these kind of comments provoke massive reactions – in their cases, to the point where ambassadors from other countries get involved. Essentially, they’re trolling the entire concepts of diplomacy and civilisation for a reaction. This is something which some hopelessly small-town troll, flaming for kicks on the breastfeeding boards of Mumsnet, can only sighingly aspire to.
If there is one thing that defines the troll world-view, it’s a sour sense that the world is disappointing. Trolls never troll enthusiasm. The default troll attitude is one of vituperative disapproval for something millions find joy in. The first time I thought that sentence, I went, “Oh my God – that means the Daily Mail is the lodestone of trolldom. It’s the Magna Carta of Trolldom. It’s the Dead Sea Trolls.”
Because if you look at the Mail’s website, your presumption that Daily Mail readers like bitchy headlines about female celebrities putting on weight (“Fuller-Faced Cheryl Cole”) is blown out of the water. All the comments are actually from reasonable people baffled by the Mail’s tactic (“Can’t celebrities put on an ounce without it being news?” Ivy, Barking) – making you realise that the Mail are, in practice, trolling their entire readership. Amazing.
So this is why I can’t agree with the internet’s first rule: “Don’t feed the trolls.” It’s fine when it’s some spenk on a messageboard with only five users. Ignoring provocative squits is only sensible. But when millionaire celebrity broadcasters, and entire publications, start trolling, ignoring them isn’t an option. They are making trolling normative. We have to start feeding the trolls: feeding them with achingly polite e-mails and comments, reminding them of how billions of people prefer to communicate with each other, every day, in the most unregulated arena of all: courteously.