Life as the parent of two young boys has me thinking that maybe it’s time we started cutting trolls a little bit of slack.
Not, like, trolls that hide under bridges and eat Norwegian children. Such monsters. Although, to be fair, have you seen what passes for real Norwegian food? Krum kaka!
No, I’m talking about the Internet-style troll. For those of you lucky enough not to have encountered the concept, troll is an Internet slang term for someone who exists to start arguments and upset people, gaining satisfaction by provoking emotional responses from others.
Trolls show up in many places, notably on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook and in the comments sections underneath online news articles and columns.
At their tamest, trolls espouse a potentially funny, contrarian and obviously incorrect point of view just to get a rise out of decent folks, something like, “Hey you morons, I’ve met Prime Minister Harper and he is both smart and cool.”
At their worst, however, trolls bully and say horrible things to people, sometimes even picking on victims of crimes or tragedies. I have no time for the malicious trolls, but am starting to see where the mischievous trolls come from.
I see it every day, in fact, from people that I love very much. My sons, age two and four, are excellent trolls. Sometimes it seems like their entire life purpose is to provoke each other into wild rages.
A common troll shared by both my boys — and actually most children in the world, from what I can gather — is the “whatever toy you are holding right now is my favourite thing in the world and I must have it” technique.
This one is so deeply ingrained in all children that it must date back to prehistoric times, perhaps when one Cro-Magnon child showed up with an exciting new shiny rock and immediately caused all of his Cro-Magnon buddies to abandon their even more primitive toys — pointy sticks and iPhone 3s or whatever — steal the rock and throw their little Cro-Magnon buddy into an especially large fern.
My two-year-old is an absolutely marvelous troll. My older son loves to build elaborate buildings out of his Lego — tunnels, airports, towers — and surround them with long, twisty tracks with his wooden railroad set. Nothing in the world makes my younger son happier than finding the tallest, coolest building — the one his brother is most proud of — and smashing it to the ground.
“Boom chicka boooom!” he says, laughing his head off while knowing full well he’s about to get choked Homer Simpson style. He. Does. Not. Care.
Some of the trolling is slyer. My older son used to calmly explain to his little brother that he could always beat him in a race because he has longer legs.
“I’m the first because I have longer legs,” the older one would say as he raced into the bedroom for story time. The little guy caught on quick, though, and now he runs into the bedroom too and screams, “I’m the first! Long legs!”
He’s never, in fact, first. He always catches legit fury from his brother. And he always loves it.
The trolling even carries over to story time. My older son is a stickler for telling the story right, which leads to some dramatic readings of classics such as Green Eggs and Ham.
Me: “Would you eat them in a box?”
Two-year-old: (delightedly) “Yeah.”
Four-year-old: (anguished) “Noooooo! That’s not what it says.”
Me: “Would you eat them with a fox?”
Two-year-old: (casually ecstatic) “Yeah!”
Four-year-old: (angrier than Kanye at the Grammys) “Noooooooo!”
What I’m arguing here is that this is nature, not nurture. We are programmed from a young age to troll and troll hard. The boys certainly didn’t learn trolling from me.
I would never, for example, come into the living room when my wife was watching one of her TV programs such as Gray’s Anatomy and tell her how cool it was that they’re letting recent lobotomy patients write shows these days. Or tell everyone how terrible Norwegian food is. Nope, never. At least, not in front of the kids.
(Just kidding, Norwegians. I’m a Viking myself, on my mother’s side. And krum kaka — basically a thin waffle cone that can be filled with whipped cream — is delicious.)
I’m convinced the boys were born trolls, following their primal instincts to all-natural noogie conclusions.
The good news is that it goes away. My four-year-old trolls far less than he did even a year ago. Barely at all, really. And maybe that’s our hope for vicious Internet trolls. Maybe we can hope that, some day, they develop the social skills and brainpower of a clever Kindergartner.
Don’t feed the trolls is a popular mantra, meaning don’t respond to the hate so they won’t get the satisfaction. Maybe we should feed them though.
How about a big glass of milk, some healthy and delicious goldfish crackers and straight off to bed for a nap?
Just give them something to be happy about, so they don’t have to steal happiness from others. And if all else fails, krum kaka.
Andy Prest can be reached via email at: [email protected]
What are your thoughts? To send us a letter via email, click here.
