I was listening to the radio the other day and the DJ asked, “Where do trolls come from?” She meant, of course, the cyberbullies who leave scathing commentary in the comments section.
Easy answer: the troll is the person who uses their hatred of something as a distraction from pursuing their own work.
It’s so much easier to tell someone they’re doing something wrong than it is to pursue doing that thing right. (Steven Pressfield would make that case it was easier for Hitler to start World War II than it was for him to sit down and paint.)
But this is the task before us. We have to stop talking and start doing.
For example, I personally don’t like Billie Eillish. Her music doesn’t speak to me. For the most part, I find it obnoxious. Do I spend my waking hours dropping bombs on Twitter, telling her how much she sucks? Of course not. I’m too focused on my own work.
Instead of pissing and moaning about what someone didn’t say, we should be focused instead on saying those thing with our own work.
joshua chamberlain 