Emily Hill Emily Hill

The importance of being trolled

On Twitter, victimhood is a sign you’ve made it – and a way to boost your career

issue 25 March 2017

Ever since a Twitter troll was elected 45th President of the United States, the Twitterati has agonised over who to blame. But since it was Twitter that gave American voters unfettered access to Donald Trump’s brain, they really ought to be blaming Twitter itself. It’s not possible to say anything balanced or nuanced in 140 characters — that’s a format for jokes, insults and outrage. If you want to seize the world’s attention today, you must troll or be trolled on Twitter.

And since this is the one skill at which Trump is utterly unrivalled, he’s now busy trolling both America and himself. When a man with barely any followers once tweeted him in the middle of the night to say: ‘I firmly believe that @realDonaldTrump is the most superior troll on the whole of Twitter’, Trump retweeted it to his millions of followers: ‘A great compliment!’


Emily Hill and Alex Krasodomski-Jones, a trolling researcher, join the podcast:

In 2017, our ability to write books, act in films or even govern appears to be measured in Twitter followers, not talent.

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