Never feed the trolls

“Never feed the trolls” names Tabitha Moore’s refusal to give harassers the reaction they appear to want. Rather than treating silence as helplessness, she presents non-engagement as a deliberate defensive method: if the attackers are trying to provoke anger or distress, answering them may strengthen the behavior instead of ending it.

Meaning and Context

The expression enters the narrative during Officer Williams’s inquiry into the attacks on Tabitha Moore. He asks whether the incident might be an escalating drama caused by Tabitha speaking publicly about the situation. Tabitha rejects that explanation. She says she has kept silent and has not said anything that would fuel the rumors or identify a target for further retaliation.

Her reasoning depends on an interpretation of the attackers’ motives. She believes they are deliberately seeking an upset or angry response, so refusing to provide one deprives them of the reward built into their harassment. The expression therefore translates a familiar principle of online provocation into the school-bullying crisis: attention is treated as a resource, and withholding it becomes a form of resistance.

Tabitha’s Use of the Principle

Tabitha’s explanation is also shaped by her isolation. She tells Officer Williams that she keeps to herself, seldom interacts with her peers, and has only two friends. Because she cannot identify an obvious personal dispute, she has little explanation for why anyone would attack her beyond the possibility that the harassment is connected to a larger matter under investigation. Her silence is thus not evidence that the abuse is trivial; it is a response to uncertainty as well as a calculated effort not to escalate it.

The strategy reflects Tabitha’s broader attempt to preserve control over an experience in which other students have made her the object of rumors and aggression. She does not claim that silence proves her innocence or will certainly stop the attacks. Instead, she describes it as the conventional wisdom for dealing with people who are trying to provoke her, trusting that their attention will eventually move elsewhere.

Adult Reactions and the Limits of Silence

Officer Williams is struck by Tabitha’s wording and repeats the expression with amusement. He compares it to playing dead during a bear attack, then adds that teenage girls can be meaner than bears. The joke lightens the exchange without diminishing the danger; it recognizes that the social threat Tabitha faces is organized around cruelty, reaction, and spectacle rather than physical force alone.

Mr. Moore responds more harshly, calling the students’ treatment of Tabitha inhuman. Officer Williams, however, questions whether speaking up and directly denying the rumors might have defused the story. His suggestion exposes the tension at the center of the expression. Non-engagement may deny harassers the reaction they seek, but it can also leave false narratives unchallenged and place the burden of correction on the person being attacked.

Narrative and Thematic Significance

The phrase captures a conflict between two competing theories of survival. Tabitha understands harassment as behavior that feeds on attention, while Officer Williams sees public denial as a possible route to restoring the truth. Neither response is presented as a complete solution. Tabitha’s restraint protects her from being drawn into the attackers’ script, yet the adults’ questions show how silence can be misread as passivity, secrecy, or failure to defend oneself.

As an expression, “Never feed the trolls” gives Tabitha a compact vocabulary for an otherwise chaotic experience. It turns an apparently personal campaign into a recognizable pattern of deliberate provocation and makes her silence legible as an act of judgment. At the same time, the surrounding conversation refuses to romanticize withdrawal: a strategy designed to starve harassment of attention cannot by itself repair the damage caused by rumors, expose the perpetrators, or guarantee that the attackers will move on.