If you’ve ever watched DreamWorks’ “Trolls” movies, you know they’re more than a colorful animated movie series with catchy songs that get stuck in your head. Beneath the glitter, scrapbooks, subtle adult humor, and dancing, lies some surprisingly relevant lessons for today’s military-connected community.
It’s a lesson that is applicable for adults and children alike.
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Military life isn’t unlike the world of the Trolls. It’s filled with unlikely friendships, obstacles, strength in community, and moments worth celebrating. It also contains hardships, uncertainty, and people who seem determined to steal joy whenever they can for absolutely no reason.
TROLLS | Official Trailer #1
Ironically, today’s trolls don’t live under bridges. They live behind keyboards, cell phones, and other devices often hiding indoors making demands of others—never from themselves. Oftentimes, having uncomfortable face-to-face communication is difficult for them to engage, as real human interaction can be difficult.
Military spouses know the rhythm all too well, as military life has plenty of unique challenges that we have to face head-on. One day you’re celebrating a promotion, homecoming, or your child’s success at a new school and the next day—BOOM—you’re mentally preparing for another deployment, PCS, or anticipating some other type of upheaval to your family’s comfortability.
Service members carry the weight of missions, leadership responsibilities, and the expectation to remain steadfast and strong even when life is anything but easy, while military children learn adaptability long before most adults ever have to.
Together, the military community experiences extraordinary highs and equally difficult lows. The last thing it needs is unnecessary internal division created within our community.
Cue the Trolls
In “Trolls,” the Bergens (once nemeses of the Trolls) believed happiness could only come by consuming someone else’s joy. Today’s social media trolls often operate the same way. Rather than encouraging conversations and respecting opposing ideas and viewpoints from within our own community, they’re constantly on the attack.
Rather than celebrating accomplishments, they criticize them. Rather than offering solutions or support, they manufacture outrage and instigate division. Gross.
Military organizations, military spouse influencers, nonprofit and VSO leaders, installation pages, veterans, and even military families themselves often become targets. One positive announcement can quickly fill with negative comments from people who know little about the situation but plenty about creating conflict.
While sometimes the criticism is constructive, far too often it isn’t. Unfortunately, the loudest voices online aren’t always the wisest and can stir up negative reactions and use bait for the opposition.
Don’t Let Someone Else Dim Your Light
One of the most memorable moments in “Trolls” occurs when the characters literally lose their bright colors after allowing fear, sadness, and hopelessness to physically, mentally, and emotionally take over their being.
Military life can feel similar with all of the negative headlines, online criticism, political arguments, comparison, or judgment. Relentless negativity can most definitely steal shine and attempt to dim the brightest of lights, especially with the common practice of ragebaiting nowadays.
Over time, they begin draining the color from even the strongest. Badass and courageous military spouses start questioning whether they’re doing enough or why they’re even doing it.
“I’m struggling, sister,” wrote one veteran-focused non-profit founder about the morale in their organization. “Running a non-profit for veterans and military families is my calling in life, but my anxiety just cannot take the negativity. The majority of the comments are from within our own community: whether there should have been more food truck varieties, or everything should be free, to sponsors being negative about the low number of traffic from what they anticipated.”
“It’s impossible to please everyone and I’m just tired,” she continued. “I founded this organization to help our veterans. Instead of focusing on the positive, some people choose to be unhappy and make a conscious decision to be unhappy.”
Proactive organizations can become hesitant to celebrate victories because someone will inevitably criticize them which leaves their mission focus- service members- to wonder whether anyone appreciates their sacrifices. Progress and hard work can pause just because of a few bad eggs.
That’s exactly what trolls want to happen.
The Good Stuff
But here’s what the movie gets exactly right: Joy is contagious and so is kindness.
The military community has always operated strongest when it chooses connection over criticism. It looks like a military spouse welcoming a newly arrived family. A Purple Star School military liaison helping a military child feel seen. Neighbors mowing a deployed service member’s lawn to ease their family’s to do list.
It’s community volunteers organizing backpacks. Friends checking in after difficult news. Leaders choosing empathy before judgment. Parents cheering one another on instead of competing and communities celebrating retirements, homecomings, and life together.
None of these moments go viral, but they harness the power to change lives in the most ordinarily extraordinary way, every single day.
Choose Voices That Build
The word “troll” doesn’t have to belong exclusively to internet bullies or naysayers. Maybe it’s time to redefine it to be the person who scrolls past negativity without feeding it. Or one who offers encouragement instead of criticism and shares hope instead of outrage.
Be the voice reminding our military-connected communities that they are seen, appreciated, and never alone. They have enough real battles and we don’t need to create new ones online. Contribute to something bigger. Be better.
Choose to be a main character like Poppy that reminds friends throughout Trolls that happiness isn’t found in tearing others down. It grows when people choose courage, connection, and kindness—even on the hardest days.
Perhaps the real lesson leads to the call to action. The lesson is to emulate the main character that builds, not the ones covered in glitter or blasting their music or voice the loudest. It’s those that choose to build.
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