Women Writers? Get Ready for Word Salad + 12 Other Troll-sults and Abuse
A feature of the game for female writers and for writers of color? Beast-mode attacks …
I’ve written professionally since 1996. Review and comment trolls operate under the assumption that if your name isn’t “Stephen King” you’re not a “success.” Much like some of the tenured professors on review committees for academic writing positions, these commenters assume that if you write online at all, including via Medium, that you are “just a blogger” and automatically tens of thousands of rungs below them on the creative, social, economic, and academic ladder.
Whether in a published book or online, nearly everything I’ve written outside of a textbook has some type of abusive, content-free comment or poor review from an anonymous or pseudonymous troll.
Something about these people makes me think of the anonymous Tylenol killer: never caught. I suspect there are only a small number of them, each creating hundreds of troll harassment accounts and deliberately going after women writers, writers of color, and disabled writers.
They attack and blame others who express opposition to crimes against children and human rights violations that should not be controversial among sane humans.
