I was a Troll. This is why and how I Changed.
Note: To concerned readers, I have had health check ups and all is okay. Though my gums needed treatment, the other blood experiences mentioned in this article were from superficial causes and not due to any internal bleeding. I now practice a strict exercise routine and a health-conscious diet.
“They’re not my kids if I don’t support them,” I spat back at the stranger who had taken umbrage with comments I’d made a few moments earlier about how I hadn’t seen my (albeit non-existent) children for three years.
My drunk, party-going audience on the back of the crowded London bus roared in delight — they’d been softened up for such a comment (unlike the poor stranger now on the receiving end of my vitriol, who had only just hopped on board). I’d had them where I wanted them since Camden Station, having lubricated them for around fifteen minutes with vulgar sex jokes — the kind of jokes that get students kicked out of universities. Things by this point had gotten so rowdy as a result of the anarchy I’d been riling up that people were openly drinking; some men had even started to smoke cannabis too, despite the driver’s protests. I felt important. A peculiar feeling for me.
“And anyway, if women are dicked over by men like me — you know, scumbags — then they should all be lesbians, shouldn’t they,” I rambled on drunkenly, letting my mind go on autopilot. “I like lesbians, just so you know. I respect them. You can’t cheat on ’em, so you don’t get shit off ’em when you just do man stuff, innit. We all cheat, any man that tells you different is hiding something worse. Check their laptops I say, that’ll be enough to put ’em behind bars, I’m sure.”
“Jesus Christ,” gasped the man sitting next to me, seemingly unsure if he ought to be bewildered, amused or offended.
“It’s alright lad, don’t worry about it,” I slurred back at him (he was probably in his late thirties, so double my age — not someone I should be calling “lad”). I grasped at his hand as if I were consoling him over a lost loved one. “Just give me a slap if someone turns a camera on, innit. YouTube will consider you a hero by morning. You’ll be a celebrity and I’ll be where I belong. In a hospital. Or eventually stabbed by someone with the presence of mind to clean the world up.”
Every Thursday night circa 2012–2013 was like this while coming home from the club. As was every Friday and Saturday night. Sometimes Sundays too, if there was a squat rave going on in East London. Wednesday was also a good night for house parties in central London, Camden or Islington Angel. So was Thursday. Never a Monday or Tuesday though. Those were days I put aside to flush out the booze and drugs. But every other day was a party day and party days always ended on night buses. And those night buses were all like this one. Friend circles, now in two different cities, had dubbed it ‘Bus Ride With Dean’ — I even remember an incident where I thought I was going to be mugged by some local gang members, but it turned out they’d recognised me for my shenanigans and felt compelled to shout “oi, joke-boy, give us some jokes!”.
I was in this perpetual state of intoxicated lunacy for months. About six, if I remember right. I drunk so much over this period I started passing blood when using to the toilet. I developed a serious cough that nagged at me for seven months straight and I was coughing up black phlegm. The back of my throat always had a faint hint of MDMA, ketamine or blood, if not cannabis and tobacco. Though before you ask, no I’m not blaming my actions on drugs. If I’m honest, I downed booze and drugs for the purpose of getting in to this state, where I’d say absolutely anything, no matter how crass or ridiculous. I felt free, but more importantly, I felt noticeable. I’d become “The Offensive One” — that was my thing. That was what I did.
A tragedy in the news? I had a joke about it, no matter how near the knuckle or genuinely sick it was.
My own past traumas? I joked about those too.
The fact I wanted to kill myself? Nobody ever took it seriously, because I joked about it so regularly but was nevertheless still breathing — I must only be making fun of suicidal people, I think my friends thought.
This dadaist hellscape I’d built around myself made me feel good in a strange way. Jokes about subjects that made me feel sick, whether those subjects be violence, war, racism, crime or abuse made me feel better about not just the issues in question, but about myself. It served as a form of therapy while giving me an imagined pass to say whatever the hell I wanted — and people laughed. I didn’t really care if they were laughing at or with me or because they were too uncomfortable to do anything else. I was still making them laugh and it made me feel, in a warped way, kind of useful.
Then things got pretty dark, grisly and twisted. Things started to become less fun, as one would assume. Well, as a healthy individual might assume. Not me though. I must admit, what I’m about to convey took me by surprise — I thought what I was doing was therapeutic, not damaging.
I remember the night a friend of mine died in 2013. The first thing I thought upon finding out in the morning was a joke, even though I was consumed with grief and, as is the case when bipolar sufferers like myself are under mental strain, I suffered a manic episode in the weeks after. He visited me in dreams and “revealed things” to me.
When ISIS was all over the news in 2014, I remember watching news broadcasts about the savagery inflicted upon innocent people in the region — certain that if I did not make a joke quickly I would crumble in to empathetic hysterics, I spat out several menacingly dark one-liners to friends.
I remember the Pulse Night Club Shooting in 2016. I felt rotten that 49 people had died purely because they were born a sexuality that the terrorist disapproved of — to cope, my mind immediately jumped to a “joke”. A joke I still feel sick about saying and won’t repeat here, as to spare you readers from needless nausea. If I didn’t tell that joke, I felt that I had responsibility in the crime. Telling a joke, I thought, made it clear that I didn’t. Yes, I’m aware with hindsight that that’s a strange way to think.
I had made the dark humour shtick an obsession. It was like a comfort blanket that I needed to have near me at all times. If I couldn’t say something deeply offensive about it, then it meant it would have negative consequences on my mental health; the reality would consume me. I had to make the sickest and most reprehensible jokes I could.
Then things got even darker, still.
It was around early late 2016 and early 2017 that I became more politically aware. With Brexit and Trump, I felt I had to.
Enter the internet’s far right circles.
I had always followed an online troll/comedian called Coppercab, known mainly for his Gingers Do Have Souls video, which launched him to fame in 2010. I hadn’t kept up with him in a while and had recently heard that he was pulling a stunt about being transgender. Puzzled and unsure as to whether or not I should find using such a loaded topic offensive (hypocritically), I decided to check his channel and see what he’d been up to since “coming out”. This was where I became acquainted with a far right talk show host named Gavin McInnes, a man Coppercab had done several bits with.
McInnes was as dark as they came. His “humour” (we’ll get on to why I’ve put humour in inverted commas in the coming paragraphs) was almost evil, but not evil enough to have him kicked off YouTube at the time. He told Coppercab that his (Copper’s) mother died of shame, because Copper wasn’t a real man. He said women would be happier in the home. He said the homophobic f-word slur at the drop of a hat, even when saying positive things about the LGBT community. He used racial jokes. He upset pretty much everything with a pulse.
Surely, I thought to myself, he must be joking? This all had to be a bit, right?
I did a cursory Google search on McInnes. He was a co-founder of Vice. He had a Native American wife who worked in business. His children were mixed race. He had an alleged history in far left anarchist groups during his youth. There were comments dotted all over forums about how he was a deep troll;an undercover agent sent in to the far right to make them look like lunatics. A common comparison was with Andy Kaufman, one of my favourite entertainers.
“This is definitely a bit,” I said to myself reassuringly. “No way is he for real. It’s like Andy Kaufman.”
And it was set. I’d found a new outlet for my ludicrous, unceremonious and obsessive compulsive sense of humour: political trolling. It made sense to me at the time. I’d only just became seriously politically aware and the world I found myself greeted with was an insane one; one where insults, conspiracy theories, bigotry, outright lies, racist rhetoric and fake news was all commonplace. Surely, my sense of humour would fit right in?
I started using Facebook more often. The bipolar I’d been living with had turned me in to a recluse, so I wasn’t going out clubbing anymore — the internet seemed like a more viable option to let loose what I felt needed to be let loose before it consumed me. It wasn’t like Bus Ride With Dean was an option anymore — I never left my house and had put on four stone because of that fact. No, social media seemed like the more intelligent option. And you name it, I probably said it.
“Why should bakers have to bake a cake for gay people though? Freedom is freedom.”
“Taxation is theft.”
Borrowing from one of my heroes, Andy Kaufman, I would rant: “I hereby challenge all women on my friends list to a MMA match, because there is a biological difference between men and women — if I’m wrong, ladies, prove it!” (my girlfriend is a martial artist and could probably break my arm with the grace of a swan taking off from water).
Although my views on the Israel-Palestine issue are complicated, I am still for the existence of a Jewish state and I believe that Israel, though not a perfect country in terms of governmental policy at all, is a moral necessity for the protection of Jewish people. Many people on my Facebook feed were committed pro-Palestinian activists, however. Therefore, I would post things such as, “So what if Israel is aggressive? Jewish people are chosen people after all, so really and truly, they can do whatever they want. God says it’s okay. It’s in the Bible.”
“When you think about it, bullying is perfectly acceptable, because it makes people stronger — the world can do with more bullying!” — I even went on to start a fake campaign called #BackInTheLocker, which demanded initiatives to bring back bullying in schools.
I was meticulously careful not to break obscene publication acts, harass individuals or commit libel in how I worded public posts or posts shared on my timeline, however. I always made sure there was a hint of irony in what I was saying. But then, irony became the problem.
Months more went by and I behaved like this every day. I was a student, so besides studying I had nothing better to do. I just went on and on and on, and people began to tell me that my actions were either unbearably bizarre or masochistically mesmerizing. Just the reaction I wanted. I was feeling important again. Until I saw the video below.
“Irony is a way for people to express views they’re not ready to own yet (…) and irony is how fascists push their ideas. Is that person joking or are they really a fascist?,” Natalie Wynn, a left wing commentator on YouTube known as Contrapoints, said. I remember my heart rose up through my chest and got stuck in my throat.
“Oh my God,” I said to myself over a glass of red wine and a joint. “What have I been doing?”
Weeks later, Gavin McInnes cropped up in my news feeds on social media again. The Proud Boys, his fraternity, had been going around beating up students for the so-called crime of being left wing. He was never joking. Everything he said, he said with feigned irony. He genuinely believed it. Did people think I genuinely believed all the mad stuff I was coming out with then?
“But I’m not a fascist,” I thought to myself frantically. “My partner’s mixed race. I’m strongly thinking of converting to Reform Judaism (a progressive form of Judaism that, in the UK, puts emphasis gender equality).” I hadn’t always been an angel on LGBT issues, but was starting to become more aware on that front and more sensitive towards the subject. When I was homeless, Jews and black people helped me. Though a dedicated pacifist, I would still go to war to defend people from genocide (which is the only time I would violate my pacifist views, along with preventing serious crimes such as rape or murder).
But I stopped and checked myself — I had been digesting right wing media online. I followed left wing people too, sure (hence how I came across the Natalie Wynn video above), but I was still opening myself up to far right ideas. The irony they employed mirrored my own. I didn’t believe in the things I was saying, but really, was there much of a difference between myself and them?
I stopped attending synagogue for a few weeks, feeling undeserving of it, and chose to drink myself silly instead. It was the end of 2018 — four months ago to be exact. I locked myself away and spent the holidays alone, drunk and wired. I felt I didn’t deserve company. I had become a monster over the last few years. Wanting to be “the edgy one” had turned me in to something that I didn’t like having reflected back at me.
I drunk more than I ever had that New Years. I was throwing up something that was burning my throat and making me taste blood. I passed out for twenty-four hours. When I finally woke up, I decided it was time to grow up.
No more dark jokes — I need to find another way to feel useful, I thought.
No more alcohol or drugs — they were making me okay with the demon I’d turned myself in to.
“Take a stand against everything you’ve been complicit in,” I said silently to myself, imaging a stern tone to my thoughts. “You’ve done nothing but turn misery in to glee for seven straight years. People rightly think you’re a horrible person, or completely insane at best. You’ve been doing this since you were nineteen. You’re twenty-six now. You might have another fifty years left if you get clean and exercise. You can use them for something better than this.”
I deleted my former Facebook account. I unsubscribed to the propaganda channels I was following. I cleaned up my twitter. I have since opened up about why I was such a menace. I reach out to the LGBT community now. I’m signing myself up to diversity and sensitivity training at some point in the near future.
I have a long way to go though.
I was a Troll. This is why and how I Changed.
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