"Fangirl" here is a neutral term for someone who squees, squicks, and Was There. General fandom posts encouraged!
How to comfort those harassed by trolls?
Hi, my name is Priya. In one fandom I'm a part of a troll started drama for a year, including faking their death twice and planning to fake it a third time as part of a Halloween live stream. A few of my friends got badly hurt and bullied, and I for one am still fuming because I want revenge and to go Ender Wiggins on this person. How do I help the victims, and get past my anger?




I've seen a number of trolls over the years, and let me add my agreement to those who say that you can't win by sinking to their level. Even if you succeed, you end up feeling dirty by engaging with them.
There are really only 2 ways to deal with trolls like that: 1) leave the space that they are inhabiting or that fandom if the troll has ruined it for you, or 2) if you don't want to leave, ignore them utterly and completely and get the rest of the fandom to do the same. What they want more than anything else is attention, and when you deny them this by either leaving or ignoring them, they will eventually go away to try to cause trouble elsewhere.
You can also try to document what they are doing and post it in a common area - and make sure it is an unbiased account and not just "they hurt my friend's feelings". Screencaps in case they delete the sockpuppet accounts are good, too.
Thank you, everyone. All the comments have been comforting and helpful. I don't want to leave the fandom because it's a support system for me. I didn't assemble evidence, but another fandom member did. We all went I knew it and so we are on the watch for more sock puppet accounts after Halloween. I also have screencaps and may write a list of red flags.
Also, for what it's worth - there are some folks who have years-worth of a record of sock puppetry and trolling under multiple names, affecting many people in the process. I say this only to say you aren't the first and you're not alone, and the best revenge in my book is not to give in to whatever the trolls want.
Seconding the suggestion of a write-up and recordkeeping.
A couple of years ago, a little corner of fandom I frequented, devoted to a female character, was targeted by this weird, nasty troll. It succeeded in creating a really uncomfortable atmosphere in the community for a couple of months by trying to shame us out of fangirling the character we liked and making our community seem guilty of things none of us were doing - which weren't happening, period. They posted a slow influx of inflammatory, strawman-ny posts, concern trolling, off-topic posts about a completely different character from the same canon and how he was Very Important Representation of Marginalized Groups X, Y and Z - which he wasn't even part of, they were reaching like mad to argue that "coded [marginalized group]" was equal to "literally [marginalized group]" - all so that everybody was basically obligated to fangirl him, and fans of [female character] were allegedly attacking fans of [male character] in -ist ways for the aforementioned reason, and bla bla bla.
The posts seemed to be coming from all kinds of different people, and there were always yet more people liking and sharing those posts and chiming in to agree and share "experiences" and opinions to back the outrageous claims up. And established members of the community kept trying to earnestly engage, which made it even worse. Something smelled seriously fishy though, so on a hunch I looked into these people... and realized that every single one of them was a sockpuppet of the same person. We're talking dozens of accounts, all created at most two weeks before the first troll post showed up, all of them with superficially distinct and diverse but structurally identical posting habits and content backlogs. And all of them with the exact same, incredibly specific error patterns to their grammar and punctuation - if they didn't just copy-paste other people's meta and comments and pass it off as their own. Which, yes, I googled and was without fail able to track down the origins of.
So I wrote up a big post with all my observations and the dots I'd connected, and posted it where everyone could see it. Not gonna lie, that was nervewracking, even though the most common response was "YES, I FUCKING KNEW IT". But within hours, ALL the accounts I had named as potential socks were either gone or going, and I found one lonely little anonymous "FUCK YOU" in my inbox. Suspicions confirmed, problem solved. The troll tried again a couple of days later with new socks and a new angle ("the actress of the character you're stanning is a monster!! read this crackpot conspiracy theory for proof!!"), but by then everyone knew all its methods and mannerisms, so its bluff was called immediately. And after that, it never bothered us again.
tl;dr, knowledge is power, and knowing what to watch for re: the troll's history goes a long way in closing the door to future trolling endeavours they might try to undertake. So if you're worried history might repeat itself again, it could help to get a comprehensive account of past events out there. The truth will set you free~
And speaking just for myself, it was damn satisfying to run that asshole out of town with nothing but some bulletpoints and pattern recognition. No revenge necessary.
Go. YOU. Kudos!
I'd second/third the suggestion not to try and get revenge. Emotionally satisfying as it might be, it might also be giving the troll exactly what they want - more drama, plus an opportunity to frame themselves as the victim and their victims as the meanie-mean villains who started it all. (One of the worst trolls I ever had the misfortune of sharing a community with operated in exactly that way; she'd troll and harass people mercilessly, and then, when they finally lashed back, she'd go running to a third party and complain about the mean racist/sexist/fill-in-the-blank-ist bully who'd been so mean to innocent little old her, and launch a dogpile on her victim).
What I might suggest doing, at least in instances like this where fake deaths and other deliberate campaigns of deception are involved rather than just nasty arguments and hurt feelings, is documenting it. If this person has committed pseuicide twice already and threatened to do it a third time, then they may do something similar again in the future. Have someone knowledgeable about what occurred write up a post, complete with links and screen caps if possible, explaining that person X is believe to have faked their own death on Y and Z occasions: how and why people initially believed X to be dying/dead, how you all found out that X was not, in fact dead, and what explanations X offered, if any. Don't make character accusations or infer too much about their motives (ex: no "X is an evil bitch who did this because she's a huge attention whore/a terrible person who gets off on hurting people!"), just present a factual timeline of what happened that's as dispassionate as you can make it. Then, if this person pops up again in another fandom or community (or remains active in your current one), there's something you and others can use to warn people to be wary of her that's more substantial than just he said/she said gossip about who was mean to who.
Normally that kind of calling-out/receipts-keeping can fall into the "revenge/grudgewanking" category or response you want to avoid, but some kinds of deception and manipulation are hurtful enough to other fans that warning the community can be more valuable than keeping quiet to minimize drama, and faked death/suicide/terminal illness can be one of them (so can scamming other fans out of goods/money, repeatedly plagiarising others' works, and anything involving sexual harassment).
In my experience, the only way to handle a troll that leaves you in an emotionally healthy place is to disengage, leave the negative, unhealthy environment the troll has created, and focus things you enjoy that are unrelated.
I understand the anger, I really do. Especially if the only way to get away from a troll like that is to leave a fandom entirely. It's infuriating that they took away something you loved. But what it really comes down to is that you can't control the troll's actions. The only thing you can control are your own.
Like @unholyexhalation said, trolls have a lot more practice at being an asshole than you do. You're a decent person who wants to take care of your friends--you're never going to be able to equal a troll's level of being horrible because you aren't horrible at heart, and if you try I suspect you'll end up feeling bad because it's not in your nature to be awful.
So my advice, for both you and your hurt friends, would be: take a deep breath, let yourself grieve for the things the troll wrecked, and then go do something totally different and fun. Trolls do the things they do for attention and to feel important. Forgetting they exist and enjoying something regardless is the best revenge, and the only kind that leaves you in a good place.
respect the victims' wishes on how they want to be supported.
fandom revenge tends to turn into dogpile wars that drag the young and vulnerable in. especially when it's over something that wasn't aimed at you personally. i lurked a lot of fandoms over a decade and saw them fall apart like this-- better to splinter into your own group and deprive them of your attention and responses.
if they're really, really dedicated, they're probably much better and more experienced at horrible assholery than you are. they've been doing it longer and working harder at it. out-asshole-ing them will be a futile endeavor, according to my decade of lurking outside over a dozen fandom dramas that kept escalating because nobody loved themselves enough to just walk away from it.
when someone brings catfishing and violence and sockpuppet-fueled manipulation into a fandom fight, it's time to cut that off through whatever means you have. the only people i know who've felt good in retrospect after going through something like that, myself included, got the hell out of dodge and ensured that it didn't follow them to whatever alternative they went to.
Believe me, I have blocked the person. My anger comes from the lies, the deceit, and the fear that this will happen again. I will ask my hurt friends how they want to be comforted. This user may have also targeted me, though I'm not sure. They posed as their own boyfriend after faking their death the first time, and when I was offering condolences to the "boyfriend" they turned into an emotionally abusive jerk. I had to block them, and felt drained. Learning they were the same person . . . Maybe this person has experience. My other anger comes from not trusting new fandom members as easily, suspecting them to be the same user. They got away with what they did.