Here at Feministing, we think a lot about trolls. We live with them every day. There’s the light stuff: the insults to our intelligence, our appearance, our integrity. Then there’s the more heavy duty stuff. Rape threats, death threats, threats to our family and friends and colleagues. Doxxing. It’s our normal.

Then, she called him and interviewed him about what had gone through his mind when he decided to do what he did. And recorded it all. “It felt like if I could just get the specifics,” she says, “gather them up and hold them in my hands — then maybe I could start to understand all the people who were still trolling me.”

They talked for two hours, and by the end, she’d forgiven him for the terrible things he’d done – the meanest thing anyone has ever done to her. She understood what his life looked like at the time that he was trolling (he’s since stopped, he says) and she felt sorry for him. Still, she says, it’s disturbing to know that there was nothing wrong with him per se. “It’s frightening that he’s so normal,” she says. He’s not your idea of a monster, and unlike a fairy tale troll, he certainly doesn’t live alone under a bridge. He has women coworkers, and a girlfriend, and women friends. “They have no idea that he used to go online and traumatize women for fun.”

You should listen to Lindy’s “This American Life” episode. It’s heartbreaking, and comes with a big old trigger warning. But it’s a glimpse into what so many of us, at Feministing and far beyond, deal with every day — and into the minds of the people who deal it to us.

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