The More You Know (About Trolling and Tumblr)
This week I learned some great new vocabulary around online trolling. I’ve seen and felt this behavior before, but I didn’t realize it had actual names.
My top learnings:
Sealioning: it's that exhausting fake-polite bro energy questioning that shows up asking "why" just to derail a conversation.
White Knighting: When a man rushes into your comments to “defend” a woman from internet trolls, not out of solidarity, but because he thinks his feminist cape might get him a date.
Grave Digging: The fine art of digging up someones old posts like it’s the social media zombie apocalypse. Usually done to stir drama or cancel someone who thought Duck Face selfies on MySpace were cool.
Honestly, it’s kind of comforting to have language for this nonsense. Helps you clock it faster when it’s happening and learn how to deal with it.
Oh yeah, total side note but how did I not know Tumblr had so many features? I always thought Tumblr was just moody photos of bad art and the occasional text post, like if Pinterest and Twitter had an illegitimate baby raised by Hot Topic. Turns out I was wrong. Guess I’ll be staying a while.