Yesterday Huffington Post Parents ran a post by novelist Jennifer Coburn responding to critics of her earlier Salon piece in which she described her intense reaction to the text break-up her 14-year-old daughter received from her first boyfriend.
HuffPo Parents editor Lisa Belkin had written an essay shortly after the Salon piece ran, in which she questioned the ethics of bloggers who expose their kids’ private lives for big blog traffic and book deals, citing Coburn and fat-shaming mom Dara Lynn-Weiss as prime examples of blurry-boundaried mommy bloggers.
Commenters on Belkin’s essay slammed Lynn-Weiss and Coburn for pimping out their kids. Coburn didn’t see things quite that way — she said she wrote her original post with her daughter’s blessing — and in her HuffPo Parents post, she described what it was like to be on the receiving end of over-the-top vicious comments made on the basis of reading one essay. A few commenters on her Salon piece, she said, even accused her of having Borderline Personality Disorder.
Which is a pretty big insult because Borderline Personality Disorder looks something like this.
That rang a sinister bell: when my piece on the prospect of losing custody of my son ran on Salon last year, one commenter said I had Histrionic Personality Disorder — HPD being the slightly less deranged fraternal twin sister of BPD.
It looks something like this.
So I scanned the comment sections on both Coburn’s Salon piece and my Salon piece and discovered that the commenter who had accused her of being borderline and me of being histrionic was…THE VERY SAME TROLL!!!
Now I was really intrigued. Since Salon compiles pages of each registered commenter’s comments, I was able to do some easy reconnaissance work on the commenter I will refer to as Tommy DiTrolla. In 42 pages of comments on hundreds of Salon essays dating back to 2005, Tommy accused roughly half the writers of having a personality disorder.
According to Tommy, Salon staff writer Mary Elizabeth Williams has Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
Which looks something like this.
Why? Because Williams writes about her cancer, in Tommy’s esteemed opinion, solely to seek sympathy. He accused her of having Histrionic Personality Disorder as well, which means I’m in excellent company.
Tommy had some choice labels for other writers.
Salon advice columnist Cary Tennis was “codependent.”
Codependent looks something like this.
Salon editor Joan Walsh was an “ass.”
I think we all know what an ass looks like.
And a bunch of lesser-known writers like me were certifiable narcissists, borderlines, or histrionics.
Tommy knew this, he said, from years spent “reading psych papers, personal observations and theorizing.”
But what is his “theorizing” really culled from? According to psychologists who study the behaviors of Internet trolls, much of the latter’s assertions about bloggers are actually projections of their own issues and life experiences.
And this indeed proved to be the case with Tommy. After browsing his copious comments, in which he revealed bits of his own personal history, I discovered that his obsession with diagnosing bloggers stemmed from being mired in the after-effects of a torturous divorce, during which he apparently lost custody of his two sons.
Whether through the slings and arrows of a truly narcissistic ex, or through frailties all his own, Tommy apparently was reduced to riding a bike for transportation and living in a trailer. Although he referred to his job as a professor of engineering, he clearly had a lot of time to kill riffing on the psyches of bloggers.
With all that energy spent reading, and researcing personality disorders, it’s odd, and sad, that he hasn’t converted his strong opinions — some of which were actually lucid and based on solid reserach — into publishing pieces of his own.
There are a lot of Tommy DiTrollas lurking on the Internet these days, and Salon in particular is like a siren call for the angriest, stalkiest trolls around. For anyone who has been the target of rabid troll critiques, it feels like the cyber equivalent of being cornered by a bunch of middle-school Mean Girls out for a quick lynching.
While it’s true that confessional bloggers — of which I am one — should be prepared for some harsh words when they air their dirty linens in front of millions, no one should have to endure being publicly eviscerated. Especially on the basis of a single blog post.
What do you think about bloggers who blog about and share photos of their kids? Are they narcissists or simply memoirists?
What do you think is the effect on children who are the recurrent subjects of their parents’ blogs?
Is there anything positive that comes from mommy bloggers’ revelations about their children’s issues?
I think this is the best piece I’ve read about trolls. By just discussing Tommy, you’ve really hit the nail on the head. As a blogger who has written about her daughter, both online and in print, I think it depends how you do it. If the kid is simply a jumping off point to discuss a larger issue, and all names are changed, I think there’s really no harm done. On the other hand, my ex was very angry about my mentioning our child; he told me I was exposing her to kidnappers (Paranoid Personality Disorder?). Having read stuff written by anti-fat mommy Dara, I think she’s taken it too far (I also found her shots of her and her daughter in Vogue, wearing designer clothing, to be particularly exploitative).
Yeah, the fat-shaming mom made me uncomfortable too, although I think the topic of childhood weight problems is a really important one to address…don’t think I’d try her strategies though.
I think your questions are too big for pat answers. The situations too varied.
Thanks for the laughs though. Excellent visuals.
I think the article about her “fat kid” went too far (in many ways), especially because the article made it pretty clear that the mother had (self-admitted) eating disorders and parents are obviously the ones responsible if a 7-year-old is obese. (There was a line in the article that made it clear that it had never occurred to her to give her kid fruit if she was still hungry after dinner. She seemed REALLY clueless about healthy eating.)
That said, I don’t have an issue with a parent writing about her child’s struggle with weight as long it’s more factual and less emotional than the Dara article (which seemed to be all about the mother’s issues with weight and less about HOW she helped the child).
I haven’t read the texting article, but if the daughter was okay with her sharing it, what’s the issue? Other parents will run into that issue (unfortunately) and it’s not something that any of us dealt with as teens.
I had a piece published on Salon about quitting my job. The comments were vicious. Never again! I think the troll situation is out of control. Name calling, diagnosing bloggers will mental illness, etc. is way outside the bounds of a comment on a post, even a comment that disagrees with the blogger’s point of view, writing style or anything else. It ruins a site.
FINALLY subscribed to your feed. Jesus, what took me so long?
While I’m used to a lot of this for obvious reasons, having been around so long and been so open, what really gets me is the NOT impersonal, stranger-type trolls. For example: after connecting some very obvious dots that I clearly didn’t want to see for a long time, I realized just last week that a single person who has been giving me hell for the past year or so is actually the husband of an ex-friend (long, drama-filled story). I shouldn’t be surprised though – he trolled MamaPop when his wite was a writer for it (don’t even ask). He admitted to that. Now that I’m not friendly with his wife anymore it’s apparently open season! People like this DO, in fact, have a personality disorder.
I can barely keep up with my own life, my own friendships, and people online I care about. HOW do these people have THIS much time on their hands? Doesn’t it scare them a little, that they care so much about strangers that they feel the need to harass them? Doesn’t’ that make them feel like maybe they need some help, for reals? I just don’t get it, at bottom.
Your story happens way too often — the acquaintance-turned-blog-stalker. It’s the anonymity of the internet that disinhibits people. What I don’t understand is why these people don’t have their own damn blogs.
I worry about that, since I blog about my experiences raising a boy with autism. I started blogging when he was two and he is now almost eight. I have shared a lot and now that I am going through a divorce, it feels easier writing there than talking to friends. My soon-to-be-ex made me take down one of my posts since he felt it shared too much. Sad that I am still letting myself be controlled…
It’s happening a lot these days, divorced bloggers being censored by exes or the court.
I agree with Denise and think the question is way too broad. I personally can’t stand to read the mom blogs that use fake names for their kids unless they’re real names — it’s annoying, but that’s just a personal thing. As for the privacy issue, I don’t know — I certainly have put my stuff out there, including my kids’ names and their photos. There are certain issues that I don’t touch — like my marriage — and when I start reading others’ posts that I deem too intense and personal or that make me instinctively uncomfortable, I’ll click off. As for trolls, sometimes I respond with indignation and that is sort of fun. The rest of them can go f$%$ themselves; I don’t give them the time of day.
Hmm, interesting question. Personally, I feel any discussion of a third party’s personal life should be made in a way that does not disclose their identity. So if they’re your kids for example, it’s probably best if your identity is anonymous too. I suppose if they’re adults and you have their permission, it might be different but otherwise no.