Editor's note: On Apr. 6, one of our freelancers, Lisa Kirchner, published an article in the Huffington Post about her decision to marry a St. Petersburg man she'd met, fallen in love with, and intended to marry a month later. And, oh, yes — he voted for Trump. The internet reacted. Lisa reacted to their reactions. And if you've ever wondered what it's like to be the subject of an internet pile-on, Lisa's telling you.
As the latest half-eaten sandwich of modern-day locusts (aka internet trolls), I wondered what drives people to such extremes. I’m not a troller, and I don't post comments on articles. Those little boxes often bill themselves as conversations, but they’re better suited for what they’ve become — a platform for slinging rotten tomatoes. But if I’d seen the headline, “I’m A Liberal Feminist And Next Month I’m Marrying a Trump Voter,” on any one of the 19,000 Facebook shares it got, I too might’ve rung in. Something along the lines of, “What a moron.” Except the liberal feminist in question was me, and the Trump voter was my soon-to-be-husband.
The title wasn’t what I submitted, which I still prefer, “Could My Heart Survive Donald Trump?” I posed the question because of a medical condition that presented itself shortly after the 2016 election, costochondritis, a painful swelling of the cartilage around the ribcage brought on by stress. The election had literally made me heartsick, and my immediate solution was not to talk about the election.
Thus my decision to out my fiancé as someone who’d voted for Donald Trump was not about the politics of it, rather, it was to show how extraordinary it was that I didn’t reject him immediately upon his admission. And if the internet fury is any indication, counterintuitive as it may seem, I’m glad I wrote the piece.
I was nervous even showing the essay to my writing group, a cohort of liberal New Yorkers whose work I admire. The fact was, in the year and a half since my partner and I met, I’d told few people about his vote — only my mentor, a Buddhist monk, and a friend who was married to someone who works for FOX News. Of course I knew people would be pissed that I, a vocal Hillary Clinton supporter, was marrying someone who’d voted for Donald Trump. I certainly wasn’t in too deep before he told me — I knew before we ever met. The simple truth was, after 10 years of dating in New York City, I found the honesty refreshing. My opposition was clear.
Even so, more than a year and a half after the fact, it was not without trepidation that I hit the send button on my piece. But if three decades of addiction recovery had taught me anything, it’s that you’re only as sick as your secrets.
The comments rolled in quickly. “Midlife desperation is a strong motivator to overlook pitfalls in a relationship,” commented a bearded reader.
“Trump supporters are a scourge that need to be either reprogrammed, like a drug addict, or eliminated through attrition,” wrote another white, male-presenting reader with a fluffy silver beard.
“It’s called "White privilege." And "desperation",[sic]” wrote another, mysteriously using quotation marks despite that those are real things. While I can’t be bothered with speaking to my personal “desperation,” I can agree that such privilege exists. And it’s why I almost never met him, despite that nothing suggested this man was blind to his unearned advantages in life. The way he’d asked about me, and spoken of his ex, family and colleagues made him seem a compassionate, liberal person. But I digress. Contempt for Trump does not equate with being a liberal.
Those are just the trolls, I thought. Then Facebook rang in.
The first person to respond on my personal page asked, “So what ARE his politics?”
“Interesting response,” I wrote, still naively thinking the piece was about mindfully getting to know someone instead of having my typical knee jerk reaction to something I didn’t immediately understand.
Then came the deluge of vitriol, on Twitter, Facebook and private messages. The first critique to stick was the accusation that I was normalizing Donald Trump.
On the one hand, I found it odd that the Orange Menace's own writings via his daily Tweets, public appearances and actual legislation would have less power to convince the world he never should have been elected. Yet another part of me understood the validity of this comment. Only, I never did talk about my partner’s actual politics, because the piece was not about politics. Trying to convince people to pump the brakes before reacting, however, had done the opposite.
“YOU. ARE. THE DUMBEST. PERSON. EVER.” Internet-yelled one guy in one of several personal messages sent over a few days.
And then I did have my more customary reaction — after several days of mudslinging, I deleted negative comments on my author page. Rather than deprive the fire of its oxygen, this fanned the flame. This just goes to show how hard it is not swat at things you don't like. But I know from past experience, reacting keeps me on the hamster wheel of life, ever clawing for that higher rung and never leaving the starting point.
“A Trump supporter is obviously so flawed in both character and intellect that there can be no excuse for marrying one,” wrote another as the comments kept coming.
But what about the people out there already married to someone who voted for Trump? Or people related to someone who voted for Donald Trump? Or — be still my beating heart — those who had actually voted for the man himself? Hadn't we, as a country — and me personally — seen how trying to ignore or deny people's feelings made situations worse?
“Judging dems individual basis, yes absolutely correct because they are totally different from each other. Registered R's, not so much. Judge each of them harshly and if you believe they are good people then you are a horrible person.”
Really? Not only were my supposed compatriots on the liberal side threatening “attrition,” they were presenting as guilty of the very crime I was trying to speak against — the rash behavior of absolutism. It is the thing that makes dictators thrive.
Going back to my original question, I found studies show that Internet trolls share personality traits with sadists, deriving pleasure from watching others suffer. Comments and clicks provide a quick cheap thrill, and this is the fuel that fires our current president. The religious scholar Reza Aslan recently compared the Trump machine to a cult, drawing a distinct correlation between their behavior and Trump's own status as a "divine and prophetic character." Contrite as I may seem about the thumb lashings I've received, I take seriously what they portend. Likewise, I'm equally dismayed by those who reject the anger.
Of course I agree that I have a right to my life and expression thereof, but I do get why my unlikely love story could be considered galling, especially with that headline. I wrote about this precisely because it's provocative, as in — I'd hoped — thought-provoking. Just as I declare my right to do so, however, I'd defend any person's right to express their own opinion. Less personal opinions might be more effective, but there I go being judge-y again. See? This shit is hard.
But I won’t feed the beasts by withering in light of the critique. Too many people wrote to tell me that this was how and why they’d shut down and stopped writing. My hope was, and continues to be, that we stop moving at the speed of the Internet. That we ask questions before we make decisions rather than type out diatribes we forget about before the next news cycle.
Lisa L. Kirchner is the author of the critically acclaimed Hello American Lady Creature: What I Learned as a Woman in Qatar. Her work has appeared in book anthologies, magazines & newspapers including The Washington Post and Salon. Celebrity interviews include Amy Sedaris, Xavier Dolan and John Sayles. At one time she was simultaneously the dating columnist for an alternative newsweekly, bridal editor for a society rag and the religion reporter for a gay and lesbian newspaper. More at lisalkirchner.com.
