Everyone Gets One Eventually
A few years back I wrote something here about trolls—the anatomy of them, the psychology, the particular flavor of anonymous cruelty the internet had perfected. It got me thinking about how other people who live online handle it. So I asked five of them. What came back was more varied and more honest than I expected.
Jana Windoffer, who edits the fashion blog Bekleidet, led with something specific: someone had written under a photo of her that she had elephant legs. She knew it wasn’t true. What stuck with her wasn’t the insult itself but the question of intent. Why do people tell an ugly person they’re ugly?
Not as a helpful nudge. Not as constructive anything. Purely to make someone feel bad—delivered by a person who wouldn’t say it to her face and wouldn’t put their name on it. She’d learned to delete without responding. I know how much that annoys you,
she wrote, addressing the troll directly. Sometimes she feels like a kindergarten teacher.
Wenke Walter, who runs WENKEWHO, had a different relationship with it entirely. Trolls don’t bother her—they entertain her. Her take was almost celebratory: Trolls have to exist just like groupies do. They’re a sign that you’ve successfully polarized people.
Getting hated on, in her framework, is evidence that you’re doing something worth reacting to. She wasn’t wrong, even if her conclusion—basically, let them run headfirst into imaginary steel walls—was more gleeful than therapeutic.
Wolf Speer, then editorial director at the games channel Game One, brought the most grounded read. Trolls have always existed; the internet just handed hyperactive contrarians a megaphone. His practical advice was the oldest in the book: don’t feed them. But he also acknowledged that even seasoned online veterans have a pain threshold, and once it’s crossed, all good intentions evaporate and you find yourself swearing you’ll never publish another word because the internet is apparently full of—and here he self-censors, which is funnier than spelling it out—idiots who can shove their opinions somewhere specific. He called that release valve useful but temporary. The smarter observation was about the silent majority: for every aggressive commenter, there are ten quiet readers who liked what you did and said nothing. Those people are why you keep going.
Heiko Hebig, working in digital strategy at the Spiegel Group, was the most clinical. His position: trolls deserve zero public attention, because attention is the entire point. Delete the comment. Don’t engage with the conversation they’re trying to start. He also pushed back on the idea that anonymity protects them—anyone who’s administered a blog or forum long enough starts recognizing patterns. Same cadence, same rhetorical moves, same tells. Noticeable patterns are relatively easy to block,
he said. When comments become hateful, threatening, or personally abusive: take them offline. Nothing more, nothing less.
The most interesting answer came from Hannah, who wrote for this blog at the time. She made a distinction I keep coming back to: there’s ordinary trolling, which is manageable and sometimes even funny, and then there’s the kind that tips into threats and extremism, which isn’t trolling at all—it’s terror. She also noted something true about the medium itself. The internet is mostly letters. No tone, no face, no body language. Not everyone can express themselves in writing, and that gap between what someone feels and what they manage to type tends to amplify everything in the worst direction. In primary school you still risked detention for mocking a kid with glasses,
she wrote, and had to deal with it the next day—instead of just closing the laptop.
That last line is the one that stays with me. The laptop lid as escape hatch. The troll gets to be whoever they want for thirty seconds and then disappear back into their actual life, where presumably none of this exists. You don’t get that option. Your name is on it. The comment lives in your inbox. The gap between those two experiences—the cost they pay versus the cost you pay—is basically the entire problem, and no amount of pattern-blocking or kindergarten-teacher patience fully closes it.