Between the Reply Guys playing devil’s advocate and the shitposters spamming disinformation for fun, today’s trolls play in a completely different league from the keyboard warriors of yesteryear. And they don’t just troll randomly for lolz. They latch on to their targets, hoping to get a rise by spreading their brand of hate—whether racist, sexist, homophobic, or all of the above—relentlessly and more organized than ever before.
Fortunately, a new generation of online avengers has emerged to push back this toxic tsunami of trolling, using all the tools at their disposal. WIRED spoke to some of the internet’s most famous (and infamous) combatants, from a science communicator taking on anti-vaxxers to a moderator in one of Reddit’s feistiest corners, about how to win a fight online.
Interviews have been edited for length and clarity.
Derek Guy, aka The Menswear Guy, @dieworkwear
Last week, you wrote a long post on X talking about your life as an undocumented immigrant. Vice President JD Vance made a separate post seeming to suggest you should be deported. You followed that up by posting some photos of him and saying, “I think I can outrun you in these clothes.”
To be honest, that was just a throwaway line. I’m not trying to win an online dunk contest with the vice president of the United States. What stands out most to me in that interaction is not who “won” the exchange but the fact that the vice president of the United States is so intensely online, at least compared to VPs of the past.
That, to me, is one of the more interesting shifts in American politics: A large segment of the Republican coalition—including figures like Charlie Kirk and Matt Walsh—is deeply immersed in online spaces. Even the official government accounts for the Department of Homeland Security and White House appear to be managed by people fluent in the language of Twitter.
I can’t imagine any VP in the past, such as Dick Cheney, “clapping back” or posting memes. Being a highly “online” person is a very embarrassing thing and should be relegated to basement losers.
Do you often get trolled?
I’ve gotten some pretty prominent conservative figures who will say, like, “We’re gonna deport you back to Vietnam,” “You’re brown,” “You’re gay,” all the slurs that are wrapped up into that. I don’t know if it happens on every post, but I do get it every single day. In the early 2000s, if I saw that, I would think, oh, that person’s trolling, they don’t genuinely mean they want to deport immigrants. But now, I do think there are some people who genuinely mean that.
So how do you out-troll a troll?
Sometimes I’ll reply or I’ll retweet and make a comment. Recently, someone said, “You’ll always be a slinty-eyed foreigner,” and then I just made a joke. I said, “My naturally squinty eyes are how I see small differences in clothing no one else notices.” But I’m not going to retweet every person who says something to me, because I think that would be tiring for an audience. So most of the time, 99.999999 percent of the time, I just block. I’m really block-happy. It’s polite to the people who follow you, because they don’t want to read a bunch of white nationalists, and I don’t want to read a bunch of white nationalists.
Is there a meme that best represents your online persona?
The “I called your tailor” thing was associated with me. I didn’t really mean for that to be a clapback. Someone had posted that they were wearing a bespoke suit. I looked at it, and I was like, I don’t think that’s a bespoke suit. So I called the tailor to double-check, and then I replied. A bunch of people retweeted that, and it blew up. But I just considered it fact-checking.
So, are you a troll?
My approach to the internet is shaped by how I grew up: busting balls and cracking jokes with friends, and then also posting informative things.
Samantha Yammine, Science Communicator, @science.sam
Tell us about your trolls in the science world.
Whenever I post about the science of vaccines or any cool space news, there’s an uptick in troll behavior. To be clear, I think some trolling is good or at least neutral, and some is bad—but it’s always about attention.
I don’t consider it trolling when people ask any type of science question they’re genuinely curious about. Even if it’s far-fetched or tied to a conspiracy theory, I want to be having open conversations with people about science, no matter where they’re at. But it becomes troll behavior when someone is purposely engaging to be mean and/or waste my time.
I’ve had people spam my accounts, share my photo with devil horns because I talked about vaccines, threaten me (which goes beyond trolling at that point), try to neg me into debating them about things they are not experts in and that are not at all up for debate.
Any memorable stories?
My favorite was the time a trashy news site called me “Science Scam” instead of Science Sam. [Eds. note: The post has since been removed.] I think they were mad that I cofounded Science Is a Drag (a drag show) and was hired to train public health researchers on how to share essential science during the pandemic. Anyway, now some of my friends call me Science Scam because we found it so hilarious, though a few others have made the connection and tried to use it to be mean, I guess. I can’t say it lands.
I also recently realized there’s this one guy who’s been sending me multiple pictures a day on Instagram. I don’t know what the photos are of because they’re hidden unless you click on them. While I am low-key morbidly curious, the fear of existing as a woman on the internet has held me back from ever checking.
How do you out-troll a troll?
I take scientific accuracy and the way science is used to influence human rights very seriously. But what people think about me online, not so much. I don’t think I’d have survived in this industry very long if I did.
What are some of your strategies to deal with Reply Guys?
My philosophy is to always assume people are engaging in good faith. If they double down and get nastier after that, then they either get a clapback or they get restricted, which is a feature on Instagram that means nothing they comment on your page will be public, but they’ll have no idea so they’ll just keep talking into the void and waste their own time. It might be a little petty, but if they’re trying to waste my time and can potentially harm others by spreading disinformation, I don’t feel bad about it.
I also really believe that when people are rude to you, it says more about them than it does you. Sometimes I just reply to troll comments with, “u ok??” because honestly that is what I’m wondering. “Thanks for the engagement, have an amazing day!” is another fave, just to give people a reality check. I totally get and support how some creators have strict blocking criteria, but I very rarely block people, because I am honestly fascinated in how other people’s minds work.
Are you a troll?
I view my engagement online as a form of social currency, so I prefer to spend my likes, comments, and shares on content that I actually like and support rather than wasting time boosting engagement for content I disagree with. There are also so many scientists or science-adjacent people who have grown in popularity by being assholes, and I just don’t want to be a part of that elitist culture.
/u/YoungZaphod, Mod of the Subreddit r/UnpopularOpinion
It seems like people who post on r/unpopularopinion are all trolls. How do you moderate that?
The subreddit deals with a decent amount of trolls, but most of them are pretty low-effort. The classics like “I think Hitler was right” and similar xenophobic, racist, or otherwise ridiculous posts generally get picked up by our autofilter, but occasionally more creative ones come through. One of my favorite posts that we left up had something to do with enjoying the feeling of wet socks. Benign posts like that don’t bother me, although leaving one up on the front page for a while does generally incur an influx of more in the future.
Do you respond to trolls that try to spam the subreddit?
I’ve generally learned it’s not worth pursuing a response. I receive quite a few messages a day from people who are annoyed their shitposts aren’t being approved. Every troll thinks they’re God’s gift to the internet, when there’s really nothing to distinguish them from the thousands of other trolls out there.
What are some strategies to deal with shitposters online?
As a rule, I ignore them. It’s not worth getting upset about things on a (mostly) anonymous forum. I do enjoy back-and-forth banter a bit in some of the smaller subreddits I frequent though! If I took time out of my day to respond or read every hate message I got I would be a very busy person.
Is there a meme that best represents your online persona?
A quote from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “I’d far rather be happy than right any day.”
Are you a troll or a shitposter?
I don’t necessarily think I’m a troll, although I do enjoy playing devil’s advocate (probably why I started r/unpopularopinion in the first place). Definitely enjoy shitposting, though, as long as it’s not too serious.
Blakely Thornton, Pop Culture Anthropologist, @blakelythornton
How often do you deal with trolls giving hot takes?
I deal with trolls every single day. That is a consequence of being Black and gay on the internet.
Does it take a toll on you? How do you out-troll a troll?
Ninety-five percent of trolls can’t construct a simple sentence, so I usually just point out that they’ve confused “their” with “there” or “they’re.” I don’t respond to everyone, because there’s simply not enough time in the day, and to quote my mother, “racism isn’t the shark, it’s the water.”
So how do you deal with them?
I find a passionless recitation of the circumstances of their lives, through all publicly available information on the internet tends to end altercations fairly quickly.
Is there a meme that best represents your online persona?
The girl smirking next to a burning building. Or that little dog drinking coffee saying “it’s fine” as everything burns around him. If the two of them had a baby via surrogate it would be me.
Are you a troll?
Only if you’re an oligarch, a bigot, or both.
