Early Experience with Trolls

This post is originally from Nov 8/2006, and posted on my knitting blog.  It's still sort of funny, so I thought I'd repost it here!

 I posted to a Yahoo group I'm in about Lucy turning 4 (remember, this was 2006), and linked to here. That group is "Slightly Crunchy Attachment Parenting". Slightly Crunchy being of the 'granola head' mindset--organics, cloth diapers, minimal impact, etc--it's 'slightly' crunchy because not every one who attachment parents is a granola head extremist, hugging endangered trees on the weekend. Attachment parenting is a parenting philosophy that respects the needs of babies/children, by respecting/responding to their communication, breastfeeding, babywearing, co-sleeping...etc (someday I'll post more about it).

Just before I put my link on, a woman joined the group and started giving her opinions on fertility, conception, pregnancy, birth, and beyond. Very strong opinions, telling one member to not go to any of her doctor's appointments, not to listen to her husband...(I can't find what post she was replying to as she didn't include any of it). Women need to do it like it was done before modern medicine took over. One woman posted that modern medicine prevented her from dieing in childbirth and saved the life of her newborn, who was in the NICU, and she was recovering from a C-section the day before. That woman has been a member throughout this troubled pregnancy, and we are well aware of her situation. The new member had the nerve to tell her that that was crap and she wouldn't die, doctors lie.

So, I get a little 'in her face' about her lack of respect and disbelief that she thinks she knows more than that woman's doctors. She reads my entry about Lucy's birthstory, and writes back that she disagrees with my birth!! OMG!!
I was going to copy the ensuing discussion to here. She's so adamant about 'taking back birth' to the way it used to be, it's almost hilarious. But I'm going to wait till later...see what happens today (back in 2006...the messages were actually deleted from the group).

You want to know the real kicker about her? She's never had a baby. Is not even pregnant. Not even trying to get pregnant, not even planning on trying. Cracks me up.

We realized later that this woman was most likely a "troll"....looking for hot-button topics on the internet just to create a stir.  Never do people change their minds about a topic when confronted in the ways that trolls do it.  Never.  But yet, they're still out there!