David Mills
The poor guy got slapped around pretty badly, for the mistake of having an opinion some of his readers didn’t like. He got it in the comments section and he got it on his Facebook and Twitter pages.
He wrote me a discouraged letter. He wanted to know the trick for dealing with it. Here’s the note I sent him, a little revised, in case anyone finds it helpful, because almost all of us write sometimes and all of us have to deal with life’s trolls.
Basically, I think the answer is not a technique for dealing with hostile and abusive critics, but in being a certain kind of person, which isn’t the kind of person most people tell you to be.
The thick skin and the shell
People, I wrote him, will tell you to develop a thick skin and that’s true, but only partly and misleadingly true. By “thick skin,” they often really mean “shell.”
The writers with truly thick skins or shells we call “trolls.” Their writing often has a junkyard dog meanness and a moral ugliness to it that reflects how little others’ opinions matter to them. They’re all in for one side, and usually the simplest version of that side, and they’re in to win, for total victory, and they want to cause as much damage as possible in the fight. And they lie like a rug.
They will never affect a single reader who doesn’t already agree with them. They’re cheerleaders and rabble-rousers, not persuaders. But then, they don’t want to persuade. You’re at the disadvantage here.
As a morally serious writer, you can’t afford the thick skin, the protective shell, because to write well you need to listen to others with sensitivity and (sorry for the cliche) vulnerability. Even the really stupid comment, delivered with what I think of “crass malice,” might tell you something useful about the commenter and those he represents, or even expose a problem with your argument you hadn’t seen. Maybe in one out of five or 10 or 20 cases, but as a writer you can’t afford to miss that one out of five or ten or twenty.
You can’t have so thick a skin they can’t get under it. You have to know not only what they’re saying but what they’re thinking, and not only what they’re thinking but what they’re feeling, and not only what they’re feeling but how they engage the world, their imagination, intuitions, instincts, paradigms, good desires, evil desires, hopes, desperate hopes, blindspots, etc.
You probably won’t get them to see what you want them to see. Because they’re trolls. But importantly, trying to reach them will make you better at reaching some of the people between you and them. Learning to read them better makes you better at reading normal people.
Annoyance and pain
You’re writing to move someone’s heart and mind, not to trick them but to convince them. To persuade someone who’s genuinely unsure, or in the middle, or basically convinced the other side is right, and maybe even the troll, takes a deeper understanding of that person than just what he says.
There’s no real way to know others that well without letting yourself in for annoyance and pain. You have to turn the other cheek and that hurts. The line “They don’t mean it personally” isn’t always all that helpful. They do, because abuse is meant to depersonalize and depersonalizing is always an attack on a person.
Presumably some can manage to do it without getting hurt. The generous, for example. I think generosity is a better protection than a thick skin. The more you can credit your critics, even the cheap-shot ones, with serious intentions, even as a kind of legal fiction, the easier you’ll find dealing with them.
Those you can’t so credit (and I can think of some I can’t), you can try to see as in some way handicapped in their ability to respond with good intent. You assume they have some excuse for being a [rude name the managing editor won’t let me use].
Which I suppose is another way of saying: If you want to be a better writer, be a better person, because genuinely good people so love the other, even the (rude name), they can listen and hear him without thinking of themselves.
And the better a person you are, the better a sense you will have of the reasons the troll might not be such a troll. If you can’t find a reason, and you can’t always, and some people really get under your skin, just block him on social media and stop reading his emails. He’s forfeited any right he had to a response from you.
Understanding and abuse
That was my letter, which the writer said he found helpful. I’d add that some people shouldn’t do what I suggest, even if it would help them better understand what to say.
I write as an old white guy with a writing job, which insulates me a bit, like a free thick skin. Other writers don’t and they shouldn’t suffer for it. They can raise a wall to replace a skin.
