'This American Life' Takes On Internet Trolls And Outrage
By Tankboy in Arts & Entertainment on Jan 26, 2015 7:00PM
Ira Glass of 'This American Life,' photo by Melissa Wiley
The latest episode of This American Life, produced by Chicago Public Media, sees the crew taking on the trend of outrage in all things media. Slate opened the doors on this topic in their own excellent year-end piece exploring outrage so we're not surprised to see the TAL crew examine the subject on the airwaves.
The episode, titled "If You Don't Have Anything Nice to Say, SAY IT IN ALL CAPS," is a mixed bag bag of stories. The fourth act re-runs a story by by PJ Vogt from his new Reply All podcast—part of the Gimlet Media Network of podcasts recently launched by former TAL producer Alex Blumberg—and while it's tale of one man battling his anxiety through programming bots is a nice intro to a new podcast, it doesn't really fit the theme of "If You Don't Have Anything Nice to Say, SAY IT IN ALL CAPS."
Act Three focuses on internet outrage over the behavior of wild animals projected online via a stationary camera and the attempts of those complaining to effect change where people really shouldn't meddle. Act Two takes on vocal fry and makes the amusing argument that it only angers old people. And by old they mean "people over 40."
Act One is the highlight of the show, by far, and it's what spurred us to even profile this particular episode. Lindy West wrote for Jezebel and tells tells the tale of the waves of male hatred that would roll in in response to her posts. One troll was so vicious he started up an account in the name of West's recently deceased father and would tweet at her from that. And then, amazingly, the troll realized West was a fellow human being and began to see the error in his ways, leading him to send her a note of apology. In the episode West gets on the phone with him and has a frank discussion on what drove his trolling ways, what made him stop, and how he feels about the whole thing in retrospect. It's touching because both parties achieve genuine catharsis, but it also gives hope—if one person can so completely change his ways maybe more folks out there will do the same. In this writer's opinion we are hitting a singularity when it comes to online outrage, and people are slowly beginning to realize that their voices are being heard by actual people and not faceless totems begging to be attacked.