Troll-Fighting Tactic #2: Cite Real-Life Sources

As I’ve said, Man Boobz’s original tagline was “I mock it,” but that was hardly the only tool we used. Pecunium agreed with this strategy, but he also was particularly good at unleashing the Credible Hulk and fighting facts pulled straight from trolls’ butts with real sources. It was only after getting hit with the fire hose stream of opinions on Man Boobz (at that point, comment threads regularly went over 400) that I fully realized how vital original sources really were, as opposed to a formality in academic papers. A troll might continue in the same vein as before after you posted the original version of what a long-dead feminist said, but in the process, they made themselves look pretty stupid.

Troll-Fighting Tactic #3: Retain Some Humility

The emphasis on citations also made me realize for the first time how uninformed most of my own opinions were. For example, I might argue passionately that dental dams needed to be used for all sex, only to have it brought up that there’d never been a definitive study done on them. I found that there were multiple sources for the number of women raped in the U.S. (though it was still a serious problem) and that there was actual medical reasoning behind banning partners of bisexual people from giving blood. Even though I might have a better handle on, say, evolution than the average troll, my ignorance was still more insidious than I had previously given it credit for. Today I still try to keep that in mind even when arguing for “the right side of history.” A little humbleness is good, even when your goal is to flip your opponent out of the ring.

Troll-Fighting Tactic #4: Give ‘em the Snark

Man Boobz also taught me that tearing into the trolls with snark can serve as a kind of stress relief, a benefit that I’d never imagined back when the advice I most often received for dealing with nasty people on the Internet was “ignore them.” My hunger for blood was never as great as when I was living in a frustrating housing situation where my housemate seemed bound and determined to check off every box of bigot bingo, regularly announcing that black people didn’t belong in a fantasy series or that non-gendered pronouns were nonsensical. To that end, one of my most satisfying memories is of spending almost an hour on the Man Boobz forum, systematically shredding a nerdy dudebro who had unwisely claimed that Game of Thrones had rape in it because that made it “historical.” Doing the same to people I lived with might have endangered my living situation, but my online shenanigans allowed me to brush off their real-life arguments with much less frustration.

Troll-Fighting Tactic #5: Be Creative

Of course, snarking back means you may lose the moral high ground in some people’s eyes, but as long as you’re not threatening them with death or posting their home address, creative smackdowns are a perfectly acceptable response to someone who thinks you’re lesser simply due to your genitalia. One of the more effective anti-troll methods the Man Boobz crew discovered was to take a troll’s more nonsensical statements and form a Mad Libs-style game out of them. Perhaps due in part to the usual “don’t feed the trolls” advice, many of our cruelest commentators seemed honestly shocked that we decided to fight back and would often flounce in confusion when they couldn’t come up with something equally amusing.

Troll-Fighting Tactic #6: Feed the Trolls Until They Explode

Finally, Man Boobz offered something that I had previously never had on the Internet and unfortunately can’t be easily replicated: We were a posse. The privilege of having a group on your side wasn’t something I fully appreciated until I tried to take on a nasty xoJane comment section alone. The result was the written equivalent of Johnny Storm vs. the billion monsters: a very pretty flare with nothing to show for it.

Having a buddy (or five) doesn’t necessarily mean you’re in the right, but having enough backup that you can flood a thread with body-positive messages means that a lot of trolls will give up and start crying that no one’s listening to them rather than continue to post about how ugly fat ladies are. On Man Boobz, we called it “feeding the trolls until they explode” (though I’m sure the term didn’t originate with us). As result of getting piled on, the trolls would often break out the gendered insults — specifically forbidden by Man Boobz’s mod rules — and then David would just have to perform clean-up by banning them. (Different article, but definite community rules and a firm hand on the ban button also have their place in troll control.)