Don't Let Them Distract You
thoughts on social hierarchy (& trolling)
I hate to write about trolling again so soon, but in a really baffling way it has become a huge part of my online experience lately. In the last year or so, but more acutely in the last six months, my content has undergone a real shift. As I’ve gotten more spiritual/cosmic/personal development-oriented, I feel pulled to share more about the lessons I’ve learned/am learning and at least attempt to spread some positivity. Increasingly, I feel like there’s no point in putting anything else out there – there is enough snippiness, enough hopelessness, enough bitterness, enough dysfunction, enough hate. There are enough comment sections that will reward you for the cruelest take, for the most uncharitable reading of the most innocuous perspective, so I don’t need to create a home for more of that. I try my best to create a digital space that hopefully leaves you feeling a little better than when you came to it.
Perhaps naively, I didn’t anticipate the corresponding change in the kind of hate I receive. I am no longer an ugly fat whore; I should simply shut the fuck up. My days as a [slur of your choice] who will die alone have ended; I am an insecure idiot who preaches to other insecure idiots; I am a “positivity vulture” (whatever that means…); and again, I don’t know what I’m talking about – so I should just shut the fuck up. I’ve never said this explicitly but maybe I need to: I’m not an expert and I’m not a guru. I am simply a girl who woke up one day and realized that I was actually, in fact, a grown ass woman (it sneaks up on you!) and I’m sharing some of what I’ve learned in my time here. That’s it. And I think that’s enough because I think I’m enough. This, I’ve found, can be quite triggering for others but I refuse to spend my life feeling less than so…🤷🏾♀️.
What brings me here is an experience I had on TikTok with another rabid troll. I get my content stolen often, typically by creators with larger platforms or by creators with features that are favored by the algorithm (read: are not Black). This is why I was particularly enraged when a man stitched me to accuse me of stealing a joke I made in a recent video. I’d have never noticed his video if he didn’t return to my page several times to leave unhinged comments encouraging me to watch it. In it, he claimed to have seen an imaginary video “onTikTok or YouTube or somewhere” that I stole from (a blatant lie, because the only thing I steal is oversized T-shirts from exes.) He went on to call me a piece of shit, a vulture (there’s that word again…), and denigrate my faith, among other things. What stuck out to me the most was how incensed he seemed about the fact that I try to make motivational content. Who are you trying to motivate? He asked, in a tone that very much said: shut the fuck up you yappy broad!
People trying to muzzle me online for trying to be more positive has surprised me, but I’ve gotten fairly used to it and usually shrug it off. But the insistence that I’d stolen someone’s creativity and work and passed it off as my own has bothered me for days. I’ve been tempted to respond and defend myself several times, which of course is what he wants – when I went to his page to block him, the video had one view. This is on par with his other videos, which exclusively feature him stitching and harassing Black women. I know a troll when I see one, so I never engage and give them the attention they seek – I prefer to let them languish in the obscurity they’re plainly desperate to be rescued from.
But the anger and indignation have not left me. Several times the claim has returned to my mind, unbidden, and pissed me TF off all over again. “Me? Steal a joke for TikTok?” I’ll think while brushing my teeth, washing the dishes, writing. The idea is such an affront to me that ruminating on it has probably stolen hours of productivity from me over the last week or so. I was on my evening walk thinking again on how outrageous the suggestion was when I suddenly remembered a Toni Morrison quote I first encountered in college:
“The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”
In this particular instance, racism is not the culprit – the man in question is also Black, so this is just garden variety misogyny at play (you’d think by now I’d be used to this, but alas). But I think this quote is relevant not just to any form of oppression, but to the very notion of social hierarchy at all. I realize now this is what I was getting at when I made this video, when I first started trying to wrap my head around why my decision to make more positive content had exposed me to the most relentless vitriol I’ve experienced since being online. I’ve found that many people build their whole lives based on where they exist in various hierarchies, and I’ve written before on how I was one of them, chasing academic and career validation to feel secure and valuable.
But of course these external things are just that – things – and so I’ve had to shake them off in the pursuit of true meaning in life (I’m still figuring this out, but sitting in the sun, drinking a chai latte, and listening to the new Beyoncé is certainly close.) I said in the video that people will hate you when they can’t feel superior to you, which I still think is true – but the reason they can’t feel superior to you is because they can sense you’re no longer invested in the idea of hierarchy at all. The issue is that shaking off your allegiance to hierarchy is extremely triggering to people who still live and die by them, and being triggered will cause them to lash out, to try to goad you into conflict so you respond in kind. When that happens, they can rest easy, knowing that they’ve caused you to reveal your “true” character, never mind the provocation.
Their assumption is that your behavior – living on your own terms, sharing what you believe in, literally just being yourself – is a reflection of the fact that you’re “above” them on the hierarchy, not that you’ve simply thrown the whole concept in the trash with other useless things, like Shein clothes that disintegrate after one wash. (The ego is at fault here, so if you needed another sign to kill yours – here it is). Living your life trying to appease others, trying to “win” the game is fundamentally a distraction. It keeps you from knowing what you truly want, what you genuinely value because you are too consumed with trying to acquire things that give you status and value in the hierarchy without even stopping to consider if you actually give shit about any of those things at all. You are kept from doing your work – developing a sense of self, learning to love yourself, discovering what it means to live a life that is authentically you – because you are too distracted, spending all your time trying to prove your already inherent value. But, as Mother Morrison says, there will always be one more thing. You have the degree but not from the right school. You have some money but your neighbor has more. There’s a roof over your head but it’s not big enough. You have the love of a genuine partner but no piles of designer gifts to share on social media. It will never be enough. You will never be enough. And that is the point of the hierarchy, to keep you wanting and wanting and wanting, out of touch and unhappy, so you will consume and consume and consume looking for external things to fix what can only be reconciled from within.
Don’t get distracted. Do your work.
So that’s that! I’m done writing about trolls for eternity and you can hold me to that. I’ll leave you with this on this lovely Sunday:
See you next week,
Lola xx