How an Internet trolling victim bonded with her worst troll

[This article contains spoilers about the radio episode in question.]

On Friday, public radio series This American Life dedicated an episode to stories that revolved around anonymous Internet complaints and abuse. Titled “If You Don’t Have Anything Nice To Say, SAY IT IN ALL-CAPS,” the episode touched upon online feedback in various forms: some sent to the operators of a “momzilla” zoo webcam, some sent to This American Life‘s producers, and some sent by a robot to its creator.

Most of the stories focused on the recipients of “bile and hate,” but one turned the tables by calling an apologetic ex-troll on the phone, at which point he catalogued and apologized for his use of anonymous, hurtful speech.

In 2013, author and former Jezebel columnist Lindy West wrote an article about Internet trolling—an issue she said is “part of her job” due to responses to articles about such topics as feminism and rape jokes—that included an intense accusation: Someone had gone to the trouble of creating a fake Twitter profile for her recently deceased father. Her segment on Friday’s TAL episode explained that she’d received at least one tweet from that fake account. “I didn’t keep a copy for my scrapbook, but it was mean, and my dad was never mean, so it couldn’t be from him,” West said. “Also, he was dead.”

The Twitter account’s level of detail indicated that its creator had done his homework about West’s family, including a real photo of her father and a bio that read, “Embarrassed father of an idiot; the other two kids are fine.”

Once she saw the account and its tweets, West said she thought about taking the typical advice: “Don’t feed the trolls.” But after considering issues that other trolling victims have dealt with, including having home addresses posted by antagonistic imageboard users, West concluded, “Silence is what the trolls want.” She chose instead to describe the trolling at length in a Jezebel column. “I wrote candidly, angrily, about how much that troll hurt.”

The following day, West received a surprise in her inbox: a confession from the troll in question.

“I’m attacking someone who never attacked me”

“I don’t know why or even when I started trolling you,” the e-mail read. “I think my anger from you stems from your happiness with your own being. It served to highlight my unhappiness with myself.” The e-mail went on to confess “multiple anonymous accounts,” including the one named after her father, that had since been deleted.

“I can’t apologize enough,” the letter concluded. “It finally hit me: there’s a living, breathing human being who’s reading this shit. I’m attacking someone who never attacked me.” The e-mail also included an attachment confirming that the troll had donated $50 in West’s name to the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, where her father had received care.

West received a second e-mail days later, this time including the man’s name and other contact information. Weeks ago, 18 months after that incident, she considered the anonymous hate speech she received in response to her articles. “If I could get through to one troll—the meanest one I ever had—couldn’t I feasibly get through to any of them?” she asked herself. “Was [this person] special? Or did I do something right?”

To get an answer, she called him on the phone; while she didn’t reveal his identity, she and TAL‘s staff fact-checked every detail he claimed in the talk, other than his insistence that he no longer trolled anyone. He admitted his beef with West began due to what she’d written about living as an overweight person (“you can say ‘fat,’” she told her troll) while being dissatisfied with being “75 pounds” heavier than he wanted to be.

“When you talked about being proud of who you are and where you are, where you’re going, that stoked that anger I had,” the troll said. He also told West that she had “no fear when you write. You stand on a desk and you say, I’m Lindy West and this is what I believe, fuck you if you don’t agree with me. [I thought,] ‘Who is this bitch who thinks she knows everything?’”

When pressed about the fact that he’d only sent hate speech to women, the anonymous troll fessed up: “Back then, if someone had said to me, ‘you’re a misogynist,’ I’d say, ‘nuh-uh. I love my mom, my sisters, the girlfriends I’ve had in my life.’ But you can’t claim to be okay with women and then go online and insult them; seek them out to harm them emotionally.” (West admitted she was “satisfied” to hear this man say he was a misogynist, as opposed to other online trolls who she said routinely denied such accusations.)

“The only troll who’s ever apologized”

The conversation turned to tears when the troll said he’d found her father’s information in his obituary—the one West herself wrote. “Do you remember anything about him?” West asked, to which the troll said, “That he was a dad and loved his kids.” “How’d that make you feel?” she asked.

“Not good,” the troll answered. “I felt horrible almost immediately afterwards. You tweeted something along the lines of, ‘Good job, humanity.’ For the first time [in a trolling], it wouldn’t leave my mind. I’d put out this Internet hate and forget about it. This one would not leave me. It would not leave me. I thought about you, I knew you read it. I thought, ‘how would she feel?’ I truly am sorry about that.”