The Trolls Who Tried to Write My Story.

There is an old saying that if you tell a lie often enough, people will start to believe it. The internet has given that principle steroids.

For years, a collection of online trolls, critics, obsessives, anonymous accounts, and self-appointed commentators have attempted to write my story for me. Not content with disagreeing with my opinions or challenging my arguments, many have chosen instead to construct entire alternative versions of who I am, what I think, what I have done, and what motivates me.

According to various people online, I have been compared to Jimmy Savile, to a master manipulator, a narcissist, a bad father, a liar, a fantasist, and just about every other insult that can be squeezed into a YouTube comment section.

It's so bad, I even consider myself a menace to society!

The fascinating thing is that many of these people have never met me.

They know me through edited clips, rumours, second-hand stories, gossip, and the endless game of Chinese whispers that develops in online communities. One person says something. Another repeats it. A third embellishes it. A fourth presents it as an established fact. Before long, a complete fiction exists, supported not by evidence but by repetition.

Some trolls spend more time discussing my life than I do.

They analyse my relationships. They speculate about my family. They comment on my children. They tell the world what kind of father I am. They explain my motives. They diagnose my personality. They interpret my emotions. They even attempt to explain events they know absolutely nothing about.

One of the most extraordinary examples concerns my late mother. People online have confidently told others how she died, despite having no involvement in the event and no knowledge beyond what they have invented for themselves. To be fair, the reality is often far more dramatic and far more human than the stories manufactured by strangers seeking points in an online argument.

What becomes obvious after a while is that the truth is not the point. The point is narrative.

Every group has its mythology. Every online tribe creates heroes and villains. Once somebody is designated as the villain, facts become secondary. Everything they do is viewed through a lens of suspicion. Every action becomes evidence. Every mistake becomes proof. Every success becomes manipulation. Every defence becomes guilt.

The accusation itself becomes the evidence.

I have watched individuals who claim to oppose bullying engage in relentless harassment. I have seen people who demand honesty spread rumours they know are false. I have witnessed those who claim to support victims spend years mocking, ridiculing and attacking people they dislike.

The irony appears completely lost on them.

Some former critics have eventually stepped away and admitted things were not as straightforward as they once believed. Some have apologised for their role. Others have recognised that online mobs rarely operate according to principles of fairness or justice. They operate according to loyalty.

Once a narrative takes hold, loyalty often matters more than truth.

What I have learned through all of this is that trolls rarely know as much as they think they do.

They see fragments and imagine the whole picture. They hear rumours and mistake them for facts. They confuse confidence with knowledge. Most importantly, they underestimate the people they target.

The assumption is often that if enough pressure is applied, enough insults are thrown, enough rumours are spread, eventually the target will disappear, surrender, or conform.

Yet many people continue regardless.

Not because they enjoy conflict, but because they refuse to allow strangers to define their identity.

The internet has created a strange world where people can become minor celebrities within tiny online communities built around mutual outrage. Entire social circles can develop around discussing someone they dislike. They convince themselves they are exposing, investigating, or holding somebody accountable, when in reality they are often simply entertaining one another.

The target becomes content. The obsession becomes a hobby. And the audience gradually becomes trapped in a cycle where outrage is the fuel that keeps everything moving.

Looking back, I have come to see much of it for what it is. Not a grand conspiracy. Not a battle between good and evil. Not a serious search for truth.

Just people, (often unhappy people), sitting behind screens, trying to write somebody else's story because they have not found a better story of their own to tell.

The truth remains stubbornly simple. My life belongs to me. My experiences belong to me. My family belongs to me. My story belongs to me. Others are free to comment on it, speculate about it, criticise it, or invent entire alternative versions of it. But at the end of the day, they are still commenting from the outside looking in.

And no amount of trolling changes reality.