My favorite gas station in town no longer exists, but every time I drive by the abandoned building that used to house it, I always think about my encounter with the Concern Troll. I always stopped at this station to fill up my gas tank before making the almost 2 hour drive to my grad classes. As I was waiting for the tank to fill, an old woman pulled up on the other side. I didn't pay that much attention to her at first, as I was raised to mind my own business when people are busy doing things like getting gas. Clearly this wasn't the case for the old woman.
This many years later, I'm not sure of the exact words she said. It was something along the lines of, "wow, you are so fat" or "oh honey you need help" or some shit like that. I do remember the look of concern mixed with disgust on her face. I do remember her not leaving me alone, even after I told her, in so many words, to go fuck herself. In fact, even as I was leaving the gas station, she was still trying to bother me.
A Concern Troll is a person who will always take the opportunity to overstep their bounds and give their opinions about you and your situation. To you. They see you living your life, free of any attention being paid to them, and they decide they just HAVE to change that by making you aware of their existence so they can inform you that they don't approve of this unhealthy stuff you are doing. They see it as their duty and feel absolutely no remorse about how this may affect you. After all, they are trying to make your life better.
You will find Concern Trolls lurking in the comment section of any article pointing out how shitty fat people are treated. No matter how much the article discusses the horrible crap that can happen to fat people in our country, the Concern Trolls will always be there to point out 'but being fat is unhealthy and it costs the country so much money and besides it is so unattractive.' In their minds, I suppose, all of these factors justify the horrible crap that fat people have to face on a daily basis.
Of course, Concern Trolls don't JUST troll people about fatness. Any socially stigmatized issue that you can think of will have its own set of trolls lurking around to ruin people's day. They seem to have no concept of minding their own business or comprehension of bad timing.
My brother was bothered my a Concern Troll at my grandmother's funeral. My brother is a smoker and felt a lot of stress during my grandmother's death. It had only been a little over a year since our mother died and the idea of dealing with the death of another woman in his life was very difficult. During the meal after the service, he went outside to smoke. When he returned, a woman, who was a distant 3rd or 4th cousin and someone he had never met before, started talking to him about how he needed to quit smoking. Yes, in front of everyone. Yes, at his grandmother's funeral.
Did this cause my brother to stop smoking. Of course not. All it did was make his already horrible day even worse. Now his memory of my grandmother's funeral is tied up with this memory of having to pay attention to some Concern Troll in the middle of it. He didn't need that and he certainly didn't deserve it.
Concern Trolling is a very bad form of communication. If you find yourself in a situation where you are tempted to talk to some total stranger about something they are doing or happen to be that is objectionable to you . . . DO NOT DO IT. It's rude. It does not help them. It makes their day worse. It will not stop their behavior. Just mind your own business. Don't force people to pay attention to you just because you think you have some important message for them. They don't care, they don't want to know you, and you certainly won't be changing them.
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