The Thing About Trolls: Generic White Men, Aging Punk Edition
In this post: how the Rittenhouse verdict wormed its way into my psyche, despite my best efforts.
Last week: On reclaiming your narrative and identity from the hands of crusty-ass Generic White Men.
Next week: An introduction to the plight of self-aware white saviors, and our analysis of Bo Burnham's track "Comedy," in a three-step process to transform GWM: from 'Generic' into 'Good' white men (conceptually speaking, of course).
Dear friends and fam,
Last week, I wrote about how rapper Megan Thee Stallion's brand of Black feminism and dragging the figure of the Generic White Man (GWM), is what we all need and deserve. If you missed it, check it out here.
The other day, while riding the Subway with my girlfriend, I found myself giving my best-disappointed teacher a stare at an aging punk enthusiast as I shot him both of my middle fingers from a safe distance. A far cry from my southern debutante heritage, I can assure you this GWM had it coming. Moments prior, a disabled person asked this punk which stops to get off, and when my gf heard the punk give the wrong directions, she corrected him. As she did so, this punk looked over, dismissively waved his hand, and said, “shut the fuck up, I’m talking.”
Absolutely not. After confirming that what I heard was, in fact, correct, I proceeded to loudly discuss fragile toxic masculinity and what type of person thought that was appropriate to shout at a complete stranger, who happened to be a gay POC, for giving the correct directions to a disabled person. As I did so, I stared at this GWM clutching a worn copy of Lord of the Flies, and appeared to be tapping his leg along to The Cure blasting from his earbuds (so predictable). I realized the punk couldn’t hear me, so I settled in for a stop or two just staring at him, both mad and The disappointed.
To this man’s credit, he noticed, came over, and apologized. However, I was having none of it. As he apologized, I rolled my eyes and said, “good for you, now please go.” This Generic White Man 90s Punk Edition balked that I had not forgiven him and that I had not patted him on his head like a good boy. I thought to myself: just because you’re sorry doesn’t mean you get redemption.
He hovered over us just a bit too long, so I became more clear: I waved my hand and said “bye, son, we’re done.” (Pro tip: white men absolutely hate being called “son” and it nearly always sends them into hysterics, in my experience).
He proclaimed, “I’m not your son, I’m 46!”
At which point, my Scorpio gf responded, “So, you’re old enough to know better than to behave this way,” and sent his sorry ass packing.
Later, my gf asked me why I had been so hard on him, and then it was my turn to sputter a rant about how f-ing entitled white men are, and how just because he apologized does not mean he gets a pat on the back from me. And then, much like how that GWM probably realized his own rebel-without-a-cause attitude was no longer cute on his aging ass, I took a moment and realized my dissatisfaction with him was simply the live version of what I had been experiencing online all week: conservative trolls were flocking to the interview I had with author Jessie Daniels after an article in a conservative “newspaper” came out about it.
In fact, that very morning, I got my very first white-supremacist-themed hate mail. When I got it, I will admit that rather than being disturbed, or angered, by it, I was instead amused and excited. Finally, I was getting some traction.
The little youtube interview that I posted for a fair niche demographic has now received over 600 views on Twitter. Are most of them from conservative trolls? Yes. The comments section under the interview is fire. But, they’re listening closely enough to quote back my words, so clearly, love me or hate me, my words now haunt some region of their small Cro-Magnon man brains. As my father recently told me, “you can’t be successful unless at least 40% of your audience hates you.” CHECK, y’all! Where are my sizable book advance and multi-country speaking engagements? (hard kidding on that folks).
When my therapist asked me how I felt after receiving an email stating that I should perform a “late-term abortion on myself,” which I suppose was meant as an insult but stumped me at first because of the gross display of scientific ignorance, I said I was unfazed. After all, not so long ago, I was being trolled by academics, both IRL and online, so I proudly considered myself a graduate of how to deal with trolls academy.
I realized that the combo of hate mail and the Rittenhouse verdict (widely proclaiming that white people who spoke out against white supremacy were worthy of being shot in broad fucking daylight), had, in fact, wormed its way into my psyche, and while my anger had been directed at a fairly valid source, it had nonetheless gone too far, into the realm of unproductive discourse.
And then I remembered the failure writ large of public education to teach critical thinking, or anything for the past thirty years or so. I realized that’s why there are so many ignorant-ass trolls in the world: because we made them.
Trolls are our dark underbelly that we love to disparage, that we inwardly quake at even a whiff of something that might get one trolled online, they are the product of a school system that is inherently steeped in white supremacy and does not teach CRT, which is to say, real history, not mythical story-telling time by straight white men that counts under this nation’s common core curriculum dictates.
That’s the thing, CRT is urgent and necessary to democracy itself. But also, all these people are up in arms about what “this nation’s public schools” are teaching its kids content-wise, because as declining test scores over the past decade show, we’re barely teaching them anything at all. (this is not on the kids, this is not reflective of any individual student’s academic performance, in other words, this is not on the students, they are not “rowdier” or “lazier” -- they’re literally being taught b.s. By teachers who don’t know how to teach, because our nation’s higher education system is also a neoliberal hot mess, so they’re not getting the training they need. In fact, ask any teacher if they use what they learned in their master’s of ed program-- that’s the real litmus test-- I’ll bet ya they laugh and say “nothing,” in response.
So, what do we do with a problem like trolls?
We clap back, and then remember, they’re disgusting little symptoms of a disease we all have, and that our work is never done. But, sometimes, that means taking a moment to digest it and figure out how to deal with future hateful and grammatically-incorrect missives. My strategy? I never google myself, I’m no longer allowing myself to read comments, and to realize that this is actually why I do the work that I do.
Until next week, or until the new rona variant comes for us all, whichever happens first,
Allison
What I'm reading:
Now that it's out in paperback, I just bought Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America by Ijeoma Oluo, and will most likely talk about it next week because so far, this book is also the thot leadership we all need and deserve 🎉
Similar Posts about the Generic White Man (GWM):
NSFS: Not Safe for School, your snark-filled antidote to racism and corruption in education. Follow @postphdtheblog on Twitter and @allisonharbin_postphd on Instagram
I come by my disdain honestly in a long tradition of southern writers who remain obsessed with the uneasy cultural quagmire of postbellum southern history.