The rule of thumb for dealing with online gadflies is not to feed the trolls. And generally that's sound advice, because when you mud-wrestle a pig, no one wins. You just get dirty, and the pig loves it.
But sometimes you want to respond without escalating the hostilities, letting the troll know they've been heard but aren't taken seriously. For those times, Jacquelyn Gill of The Contemplative Mammoth has a new idea: #TrollScienceFacts. Instead of debating them, simply respond with a banal, random science fact. That way deniers can keep ranting and raving (which, to be honest, can be pretty entertaining), and you can provide on-lookers with actual facts. (Cable news should take note: this is how you do edu-tainment!)
The hashtag has been steadily used on twitter, where predictable twitter-troll Tom Nelson has done his best to co-opt it for his own denial. But the real scientists are unfazed, providing fun facts about animals (did you know the Hellbender is North America's largest salamander?) as well as facts about people (like the one in Gill's response tweet to Nelson, which states, "There are four bags of astronaut poop on the moon, left behind by Neil Armstrong during the moon landing. #trollsciencefacts").
So the next time you get an annoying tweet from deniers like @Tan123 in response to a climate change tweet, feel free to feed the troll some facts. Just make sure to tag it #trollsciencefacts so we can all learn something new.
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