For years now “don’t feed the trolls” has been a long-running and essential mantra to life online. It suggests that fighting back against negative comments is the wrong pathway and that by ignoring them you cut off their power instead. While this remains true, Jonah Hill has taken up an an alternative method for combating trolls: kill them with kindness.
On a recent Instagram post Jonah was attacked by a faceless (of course) troll who called him a “poser pompous douchebag” and made comments about his weight loss in recent years. “You were a fat nerd when you were a kid and the fact that you think you were a skater isn’t being true to yourself,” it read. Rather than ignore it Jonah instead offered up a thoughtful reply. “I was both. That is being true to myself… I can tell you’re in a lot of pain. That must feel shitty. Hit me up if you need someone to talk to. Anger is just sadness held in too long. I’m here for you dude,” he replied.
Taking things a step further Jonah then screenshotted the interaction, posting it to his timeline and using the caption to start a conversation about online rage. In a lengthy post he talked about wanting to find a way to help people with their issues so that they didn’t have to express pain through negative comments online. “Maybe there’s a way to structure this so there’s a number you can call and just talk to people with that anger and pain instead of doing something negative with it. I’m down to give as much of my free time as possible to this endeavour but maybe some of you can help me start something for real.” You can read the full post below.
His post was met with support from thousands of Instagram users, even people like Drake, Michael B Jordan, Lena White and Jessica Chastain got behind it with likes or encouraging comments. With support rallying behind Jonah’s post perhaps we’ll soon see conversations about best practice for digital mental health get more attention in online discourse. Or at least find a new method for dealing with negative trolls.