Watch Out For This Kind Of Troll
Urban Dictionary defines a concern troll as “someone who is on one side of the discussion, but pretends to be a supporter of the other side with ‘concerns.'” In other words, it’s someone who pretends to support you but couches their disagreements in the form of “concerns,” which allows them to justify criticism as the result of worrying about you. “I’m on your side,” they say, “but you shouldn’t do X, Y, and Z. It looks bad to some people — not that I agree, but I thought you should know.”
Interestingly, the Geek Feminism Wikia notes that “concern trolls are not always self-aware; they may also view themselves as potential allies who have just, oddly, never met a feminist opinion they liked.”
This isn’t to say that concern trolls target only feminists; however, feminists do often put up with a good deal of concern trolling. What’s of note here, though, is the fact that, regardless as to what their area of “concern” is, concern trolls don’t always know that they actually are concern trolls.
As a term, concern trolling gained widespread use in the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014, especially after a piece was published in the New York Times expressing concern that a cancer patient was too public about her treatment. The author justified his criticism by saying her efforts to fight cancer would make her unhappy and other patients look bad — pretty much the epitome of concern trolling.