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Welcome to the age of the internet troll

Words: is Mixmag’s Deputy Editor. Flame him on Twitter at @DuncanMixmag
Illustration: Graham Samuels

Internet haterz actually do an important job. Much like rats, vultures and other carrion-eating members of the animal kingdom, haterz are a sign of a healthy ecosystem. A few years ago, when kids were listening to The Vines, buying NME and wearing pointy shoes and those daft Libertines jackets, no-one bothered to pour internet vitriol on DJs. Why bother? Nowadays, of course, dance music is huge, and Hatebook, Twatter and PooTube resound to the noise of a thousand verbal daggers being sharpened, poisoned with human excrement and plunged into the back of almost anyone who dares make people dance.

Haterz come in several types: there’s the tribal warrior, who feels that his or her preferred genre of dance is somehow threatened by the emergence of new strains of rave, like a trout farmer concerned about a new breed of super-salmon. This incarnation can often be found moaning about how trance is the only true music and dubstep is the work of Beelzebub, and are notable for their gelled hair and frankly appalling spelling.

There’s the self-appointed ‘scene guardian’. Concerned about their favourite style being destroyed by over-exposure – but equally concerned to let everyone know that they’ve been listening to it for at least a decade, unlike all you other bloody johnny-come-latelies – they are on a one-man mission to hunt down and troll the living fuck out of any artist or DJ who looks like ‘selling out’ (or even ‘selling records’). The current popularity of dance music in the US seems to be a particular problem for this one. Just as the decline of the cuddly, native European red squirrel is threatened by its disease-ridden, lowest common denominator, ‘Song 2’ remix-playing, grey American cousin has led to concerned naturalists offering to shoot the interlopers from their kitchen window, colonials daring to make people dance risk particular ire from fans in the mother country.

My favourites, though, are the haterz with a personal axe to grind, pursuing their quarry through cyberspace with all the zeal of a spurned ex-partner. Often, investigation will reveal a deeply held grudge – perhaps a failure on the DJ’s part to be sufficiently friendly when gurned at mid-set at a club in 2007. Add to this the local DJ or promoter, who after banging away putting on poorly appointed and badly programmed raves for 50 years, gets incredibly upset when another club or artist from their area makes it big after just a few months at the coalface.

If writing hurtful, overly personal and vitriolic comments on the internetz helps you get through the day without going on a killing spree or pulling your hair out in great wispy tufts, then fine. But it’s probably better (and fairer) to pick on one of the established, time-served megastars with money in the bank. Guys like Guetta, Tiësto and Armin have sold out enough mega-arenas to not to care when someone makes a YouTube about them sampling the dog licking its balls, announces that they are dead on Twitter, makes up stories about their sexuality or accuses them of killing dance music/ripping people off. But lots of young, up-and-coming DJs and producers made their name by promoting themselves on social media, learned their trade with the help of forums and put their tunes or mixes up on SoundCloud, first for their friends, later, if they’re lucky, for their fans. When they get successful and the back-lash starts, they’re a lot less able to handle comments like, “If I ever see X, I’ll punch him in his ugly face”, or that “listening to this new track is like having a tramp piss in my ear”.

As a journalist, though, haterz are pretty useful. Not only can I steal some of their less gratuitously offensive put-downs, but they’re a great indication of 1) Whether a DJ or artist is starting to make it big (put it this way, if 50 people feel the urge to post offensive comments underneath the YouTube of their latest release, they’re probably capable of filling a 2000-capacity club or headlining an arena) and 2) Whether people will want to read about them (this is known as Jennifer Aniston syndrome; when a figure of irrational popular hatred nevertheless holds a perverse fascination for the mag-buying public).

They’ve also given me one of my funniest ever days at Mixmag, when a previous editor decided to answer his and Mixmag’s critics on now defunct raver troll-pit and gushing bile fountain Gurn.net (RIP). After a day having his psyche deconstructed by the most wretched hive of scum and villainy in the history of the internetz, he was never the same again.

Really, it’s just great that people care so much. Mixmag was built on a passion for dance music, and passions go both ways. The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference. They see me rollin’…