TV & Radio

Podcast of the week: Conversations With People Who Hate Me

Dylan Marron doesn’t ignore his trolls - he engages them in conversation

Dylan Marron

Sarah Griffin
Sat Apr 7 2018 - 05:00

The central premise of this podcast runs in harsh contradiction to everything internet users are told about interacting with hateful commentary online – Dylan Marron has in-depth phone conversations with people who leave him cruel, sarcastic, vitriolic or even downright dangerous messages on the internet.

Marron is a writer, actor and activist who creates popular videos for Youtube and Facebook that draw attention to inequalities in the world, sometimes satirically. This draws a fair amount of trolling and ignorant comments, but instead of leaving them gathering dust, Marron reaches out, invites them to pick up the phone and talk to him. The aim is investigative and holistic: ultimately an attempt to humanise the anonymous or semi-anonymous inhabitants of the internet who cause trouble and unease. Marron asks them why they hate him – or why things about who he is incite such anger in them – and handles the conversations with lightness, grace and respect.

This podcast is the meeting of two opposing forces

In episode six, Marron talks to James, who, from the get-go, identifies as an internet troll. James took a low-level shot at Marron for a video he made about the demand for Straight Pride due to the existence of Gay Pride. The conversation begins by focusing on James’ career of choice, stand-up comedy.

Marron opens this up into a discussion about how we decide what is funny and what isn’t funny: how humour is subjective and therefore stand-up is incredibly risky – he lauds James for his choice of career, immediately putting him at ease. This podcast is the meeting of two opposing forces. James is forthcoming in terms of talking about his mean comment on Marron’s video, and Marron is graceful when pulling James up on this behaviour, querying the root of why he trolls online.

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Conversation flips

James opens up about having Asperger’s syndrome – and how this intersects with his work as a comedian. He talks about how alcohol makes socialising easier, but he has grappled with addiction. He mentions that he left the comment on Marron’s video while he was drunk. The conversation flips from internet comments to addiction and recovery – and by doing this, Marron illuminates what we genuinely can never know about the lives of people online, what they struggle with, what their stories are. But the chat doesn’t linger there long: James takes the reigns again and admits taking pleasure from trolling online.

What we end up hearing is a conversation about the gamification of online abuse: how rewarding it can be to take someone down for the silent applause of likes and retweets. Marron posits the theory that trolling is a misuse of James’ power as a comedian, and he could use that power for good rather than evil. To aim the humour at those in power, rather than those without power. It is hard to tell if James is impacted truly by the conversation or just co-operating with Marron for the sake of the podcast. But it feels like an experiment that succeeds, a conversation that seeds in conflict but ends in harmony.