Kimberlee K.

While I’ve always known that internet trolls are a thing, and that the anonymity that comes with a screen allows people to say things—horrible things—that they most likely wouldn’t say when put face to face with someone, I have recently been floored by the sheer number of opinions that are thrown every which way at anyone who dares post ANYTHING.

Typically, when I see a post, especially one that makes me laugh, cry, or gives me that boost of inspiration to do something more, I like to look at the comments.

The comments can be a collection of some of the funniest, most wholesome, and most inspirational sister content to the initial post, and what I think is the best part of social media all together.

But unfortunately, along with the good, there is so, so, so, SO much bad. So much negativity, so much meanness, and so many uncalled for opinions. All of which could have easily been left unsaid.

People on social media have become our entertainment. The content we snuggle up to on the couch at night, or in the moments we feel lonely. And when they don’t give us exactly what we want, we have the opportunity to let them know. And unfortunately, people do. They make a hobby out of it. They make it a game. They make it an opportunity to let out the anger that is not only directed at that person, but at the world at large, for making them sad, for disappointing them, for hurting them, for not meeting their expectations.

As the saying goes, hurt people hurt people.

I was thinking about these hurt people today. It is hard to want good things for them. To zoom out and get their perspective when I can see, clear as day, the horrific things they are writing on social media for all to see. It is hard to see past the anger and disgust to the root of it all.

But today I felt those people on my heart, and I felt encouraged to pray for them…though I initially didn’t want to because it feels ridiculous and embarrassing. Even repeating it to myself, “a prayer for the trolls?” made it seem like this surely was a pointless pursuit.

But the idea stuck. Clung. It said, do it anyway.

And just like any other prayer I’ve felt on my heart, I knew this prayer wasn’t a sweeping, “I’ll pray for you” type of prayer. It wasn’t vague or passive. Lately, I’ve felt more and more encouraged to pray with specificity.

“Make them nicer” is sweet and all, but it doesn’t pack much of a punch.

So, after some thought, I came up with this prayer for the trolls—who are actually just people, choosing to be mean to other people, but who might just be wishing the world would be a little kinder to them.

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Dear God,

There are so many hurt people in the world. People who want to be seen and heard, people who haven’t felt seen OR heard in a long time. I have been there before, it is frustrating and disheartening, and the invitation to lash out, to focus all of that hurt and anger into meanness, spite, hate, and callousness, perhaps simply just to get it OUT of you, out of your mind, is so tempting, because you’re tired of hearing those things echoing inside your brain, putting you down.

When we lash out at our friends, or family, or anyone who might just find us on a bad day, we can see their reactions, we can see the weight of our words hit them, weigh on them, affect them. But we can’t see those things when we post hateful words online.

The comment section is so accessible, so easy, so enticing. It is like a bank for our hurt, asking us over and over to make a deposit, to give some of that burden to someone else.

But what we don’t realize is that we don’t gain anything by giving the hurt to someone else. In doing so, we only turn that hurt into shame and guilt, which recycles itself back into hurt and hate.

So I just want to pray for the people who still buy into that belief. Who still use meanness to combat the ache they feel at their core.

I don’t know all the ways they’ve been hurt, or how they’ve lost sight of kindness, encouragement, or human decency. I don’t want to gloss over what they’ve done, but I also don’t want to cast them out, proving true what they’ve desperately been clinging to: that they are not worth the kind words they see other people receiving, that the only way they will be seen, heard, or paid attention to is with hate.

I pray that even just one person today, who might log on and see something that stirs up that negativity inside them, simply won’t post it. They won’t say anything. They will choose to keep scrolling.

I pray that perspective will find those who need it most. That the blinders put up by the internet, by our screens, would be lifted and we would see the people on the other side.

I pray for reminders to pass through our minds: this is a person trying their best, I don’t know what they’ve been through, I don’t know the ways in which they too might be broken, I don’t know the circumstances that formed them or the opinions they hold.

I pray we would all become more aware of the power our words have, whether it’s to one person face to face, or in the comment section amongst hundreds of thousands of other words. We have the power to say the right thing at the exact right time, and we have the power to say the wrong thing at the exact right time.

I pray we start to better use our power for good. And I pray we all might find a way to make each other hurt a little less, rather than compete for who can hurt each other the worst.

Amen.