A Troll for All Sizes

Theorem: No matter how minor your authority on the internet, you will attract trolls.

As The Critic of Pure Reason, I’m hardly one of the web’s elite movers and shakers. I think I get a few thousand reads a month. If internet popularity were understood through a metaphor for high school popularity, then I am the third-string tight end who the cool guys might nod at in the hall but mostly has to pass the lunch hour reading The Lord of the Rings in the shade of the auxiliary building.

But here’s the latest comment I’ve got on one of my reviews: “Your Fedora does not look good on you, you lack the ‘Distinguished Gentleman’ look, give it up man.”

(For context, the Herald uses a picture of me in my fedora.)

It’s the only comment on that review. It was not a comment on the movie, True Grit. It was not even a comment telling me I have a stupid opinion about True Grit. It is a comment telling me I look bad in my hat.

I’m not surprised or even insulted. Over at The AV Club, if there’s an interview with a woman, you can bet your one and only life that 30-60% of the comments will be about how hot she is, how ugly she is, or her ultimate boneability.

I can’t say whether this attitude is driven by our culture, the medium of the internet itself, or the intersection of the two. (Well, yeah I can. It’s that last one.) If this is what the internet’s about, I wish I could spend less time on it.