I'm the Troll It's Me

Creation is one of the best weapons against your inner-mean girl.

A couple of weeks ago, I put a paywall on my Substack post and wrote that anyone who wanted to read the rest of this article needed to pay the “bridge troll,” aka me. I wrote this sentence in jest, but since then, the trolls have entered the chat. 

When I chose to be a journalist, I also chose to be at the whims of the anonymous internet. Few writers talk about the disconnect between your work and its audience, how you’ll publish something into the abyss with only a vague understanding that people will read it. (It’s one of the reasons I was so delighted to publish a piece in the NYT last year; the moderated comment section allowed me to interact with what people thought of the piece — the good and the bad. It’s also one of the nice things about Substack, too. You actually hear from people.) 

Publishing on the internet tends to go one of four ways.

1. Most of the time, I never hear a thing about what I write.

2. Occasionally, I’ll receive a wonderful email from a reader thanking me.

3. Sometimes, I’ll hear from a source challenging or reconceptualizing something I’ve written politely, which is also helpful.

4. And, other times, I will find a diatribe in my inbox that almost always comes down to some sort of misogynistic gatekeeping. 

This week, I received a rant (sent in four consecutive emails, mind you) about how unqualified I am to write about augmented reality — even though the article in question was about the intersection of AR and exercise, which, as a wellness journalist, I am qualified to cover. 

Even though I know these emails have nothing to do with me (and everything to do with the sender), they still sting. But this one hurt more than it should have, as did a comment I received right here on Substack. A comment on a note about, of all innocuous things, how awesome it is to spend time outside. I know, it’s a wild take! Controversial!

When I sent a screenshot of the interaction to my friends, they all chimed in. They told me it was just a bot. Nothing to worry about really. 

Gatekeeping is among the cleverest forms of oratory warfare because it mirrors how we speak to ourselves. When angry guy #23,947 tells me I’m not qualified to write an article about a specific topic, it rubs against all the open wounds I have from never feeling like a “real” journalist and never writing well enough. Even in the case of my climbing picture, the alpine troll’s comment hurt because, deep down, I do wish I were braver — in the outdoors and, frankly, everywhere.  

When you’re young (and maybe always), there’s a divide between who you are and who you’d like to be. Gatekeeping shines a harsh light on that divide. 

All of this reminds me of Ira Glass quote I return to every few months:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you…

“It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”

As we’re making our art and trying to “close the gap,” it’s easy to transform into little trolls. So, this week, I had a talk with myself about the state of my metaphorical green hair. Not everything in my life is feeling A+ right now. And while I have no desire to pump my veins with toxic positivity (wow, I am spitting the internet terms today), I also don’t want to interact with myself as though I’m some bot who feels morally superior because he hikes before he starts climbing. I’m pretty sure we all deserve better than the worst comments about us on the internet. 

All Photos: Arena

The only solution I’ve ever known is to keep trying or “working,” as Glass puts it. The writing puts the bridge troll to sleep, at least for a little while. And there are even pockets of time when I glimpse what my writing will be when that gap finally closes.

I’ll read over the paragraphs I wrote the day before and find something true and beautiful I don’t even remember writing. In the best cases, that feeling appears contemporaneously, and I experience real-time awe, a sense of: who did that come from? Me? Really?

Hmm, I don’t think a troll could have written that.

(On Wednesday night, my friends and I danced for two hours straight at Troye Sivan and Charli XCX’s SWEAT tour. And I’m here to say that helps too.)

This week, I couldn’t focus on one book, so I bopped around my bookshelf and visited friends new and old.

• The Diaries of Franz Kafka, 1910-1923, Franz Kafka ~ What a mind. I read Kafka’s diaries in college, but have forgotten what an eerie and fabulous experience it is to walk through the dreamscape he called daily life.

• Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke ~ I return to this any time I’m feeling doubtful about my writing. (That is to say, often.)

• Outline, Rachel Cusk ~ A stone-cold literary classic I’ve never read about a novelist teaching a course in Greece. I started it this morning and can’t put it down.

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