Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
Editorials & Other Articles
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
I missed this: How to Out-Troll the Trolls, as Told by the Internet's Foremost Posters
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.
Right now, everyone seems ready to throw down. More than ever, it’s important to pick your battles—and know how to win.
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.
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.
Right now, everyone seems ready to throw down. More than ever, it’s important to pick your battles—and know how to win.
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.
https://archive.is/lECy5#selection-1581.0-1669.627