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'Recycle artist' to build 10 giant trolls across the US this summer in global art project

Danish rapper-turned-artist Thomas Dambo spent the last nine years building 100 enormously endearing trolls around the world, each with its own unique name, story and Earth-loving message.

Courtesy of Thomas Dambo

The original Isak Heartstone troll sculpture in Breckenridge, Colorado

When we think of a "troll" in the internet age, we usually picture some sad sap wasting his one wild and precious life making inflammatory statements and luring people into inane arguments online.

But out in the physical world, some very different kinds of trolls are luring people away from their computers and out into nature. These benevolent trolls tower over humans with their enormous size and have an important message to share.

Also, they look really freaking cool.


Danish "recycle artist" Thomas Dambo has spent the past nine years building dozens of giant trolls all around the world. Each one is made entirely of recycled materials, and each is unique, with its own delightful name and origin story. Hector the Protector, who lives on the water's edge in Puerto Rico, came first in 2014. When Hector was first built, he was holding a rock to throw at anyone who threatened to hurt the island. After being damaged in Hurricane Maria, Hector "learned from his violent ways" and was rebuilt holding a lantern instead of a rock to guide sailors coming in during a storm.

Now there are at least 100 different trolls residing on nearly every continent.

Dambo has even created an entire elaborate folklore involving these trolls. For instance, legend has it that a global gathering of trolls that happens every 211 years, and in the last gathering, the trolls became angry with the humans who have stopped listening to nature and have been harming the Earth. They ultimately decided the best course of action was to eat the humans to save the planet.

But a group of six young trolls believed the humans were just young and ignorant, and because they "only live around eighty circles of light," they can't grasp the big picture. These young trolls decided to form a gang to save the humans and help them learn instead of destroying them.

Perusing Thomas Dambo's website makes it clear that these trolls are not just cool art sculptures, but living parts of an ongoing story that involves all of us, both in a literary sense and a literal one. The lore puts a fun and fantastical spin on the very real issue of humans being out of touch and so often in conflict with nature.

Take a look and listen to this brief tale about seven trolls and the magical tower they built to help the humans see more clearly.

And this magical world just keeps expanding. In the summer of 2023, he's bringing his troll installations to the U.S. with his "Way of the Bird King" tour. Dambo and a group of 22 builders will be traveling from coast to coast creating 10 new trolls out of more than 1,000 discarded wooden pallets.

“It's always been a dream for me to go on this coast-to-coast road trip, especially when I was a rapper touring around Denmark in a big bus," says Dambo. "So in some way, this feels like my big American breakthrough. My hope is that these sculptures not only showcase the beauty of repurposed materials, but also inspire people to reconnect with nature, spark their imagination, and foster a greater sense of environmental responsibility."

Artist Thomas Dambo of Denmark

Courtesy of Thomas Dambo

The first four trolls to be created on the tour will be:

6/28 Hainesport, New Jersey — a female troll named Big Rusty

7/5 South Londonderry, Vermont — a male troll named Lost Finn

7/21 Germfask, Michigan — a male troll named Benny Beardfisher

8/4 Cripple Creek, Colorado — a female troll named Rita Rockplanter

After that, Dambo and his team will head to the Pacific Northwest, where six more trolls will make their homes. Exact dates are still to be announced, but these trolls will be built in that region: Ole Ole, Pia Peacekeeper, Iduns Flute, Jacob Two Trees, Oscar the Bird King and FiFi Feet Splinter.

If they are anything like the trolls that currently live in Denmark, China, France, South Korea, Australia, Chile, Ireland and other places (including a handful of locations in the U.S.—you can find them all on the Troll Map here), they will surely draw people's attention. (But hopefully not too much attention. Poor Isak Heartstone, a troll in Breckenridge, Colorado, that was built as part of an arts festival, had to be destroyed and rebuilt in another location because too many tourists wanted a troll selfie with him, which caused complaints from locals.)

Thomas Dambo troll sculpture

Isak Heartstone 1.0, a troll in Breckenridge, Colorado, that had to be rebuilt in a different area due to too many tourists.

Thomas Dambo

Check out a few other trolls from Dambo's ongoing "Trail of a Thousand Trolls" project.

Troll sculpture in Denmark

Troll Ben Chiller in Denmark

Courtesy of Thomas Dambo

Troll sculpture with leg extending over a river

Troll MamaMimi in Jackson Hole, Wyoming

Courtesy of Thomas Dambo

Some of Dambo's trolls interact with the human world:

Troll pulling a boat on land

Troll Kaptajn Nalle in Copenhagen, Denmark

Courtesy of Thomas Dambo

It takes a team of people to bring the trolls to life.

Artists building a troll

Troll ManeMor being built in Denmark in 2023

Courtesy of Thomas Dambo

What a wonderful, whimsical way to bring attention to how humans and nature interact.

You can find more about Thomas Dambo and his magical world of Earth-loving trolls on his website, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.

'I’m a little person who joined Tinder as a social experiment. It’s been ridiculous.'

The objectification is rampant. The fetishists are persistent. But sometimes, you meet someone nice.

Warning: Some language in this piece is NSFW. Because this is an article about being a woman on Tinder. And, well, ugh. You know.

If you're a woman and a little person on Tinder, there are plenty of people happy to make your acquaintance — on very ... particular terms.

Laura Cooper, a health care worker and aspiring stand-up comedian, has been on Tinder since last spring. She's 4 feet, 2 inches tall, with a desert-dry sense of humor and a hilariously depressing Instagram feed — aptly named "Laura vs. Tinder" — on which she documents her "Groundhog Day"-like adventures on the dating app.


"They don't say the terrible things right off the bat," she says. "It usually takes them a few back-and-forths, and then they’ll tell me they have a fantasy about me."

Laura Cooper. Photo used with permission.

Cooper signed up for Tinder partly out of boredom, partly as a sort of "social experiment."

"Growing up, I was in kind of the nerdy group, and none of us dated, and in college, I didn’t really," she explains.

Though she didn't foreclose the possibility of meeting someone, she held her expectations in check, having heard dozens of horror stories from friends.

Of course, she doesn't speak for all little people, and hers is just one experience. But for better or worse, she's definitely learned a thing or two. All of it interesting — not all of it super great. And yet, some of it mildly (OK, extremely mildly) redeeming.

1. You are a "bucket list" item.

The way Cooper has decided to use Tinder is equal parts admirable and a nightmare worse than the one where robots are eating your dog: She always swipes right to match. She estimates she's matched with over 3,000 people in her hometown of Cincinnati and that roughly 170% of them send messages that are the dating app equivalent of a low, rumbling fart.

"Everyone has fantasized about banging a little person," Cooper says. If it's an exaggeration, it's not much of one, as evidenced by a quick glance at the kinds of messages she receives.

"I was going to make a joke about how my penis would be a significant percentage of your height," wrote one potential suitor, stopping himself before he said the very thing he obviously implied — and also, let's face it, kind of did say — apparently in a heroic act of herculean restraint.

Not every guy who contacts her is such a master of subtlety. "I bet my dicks [sic] half the size of your body," said someone else, very originally.

"Is my cock longer than your arms?" penned another Shakespeare.

Some men are even more ... direct, like the dude who made a bizarre reference to a specific snow removal tool when he told her he wanted, "to get a scoop shovel and tear into [her] sweet midget ass." Others try really cool awesome unique puns, like the wordsmith who said he was "trying to come over for a LITTLE ... or a SHORT period of time." Or the gentleman who posed the brilliant rhetorical question that speaks to the heart-core of every little woman's lived experience: "Riding dick is better, no?"

Cooper finds the barrage of objectifying messages partly funny, partly pathetic. For a group of strange men ostensibly trying to win her interest, she explains, these dudes could not be doing it more wrongly.

"I would caution people from treating other people like inanimate objects. I’m kind of me first and my disability second," Cooper says, "so it’s weird when my disability is all that people see. I think people need to remember that it’s a human on the other side."

2. There is virtually nothing you can say to turn off really persistent fetishists.

For guys who have made it their mission to find a little person, any little person, to have sex with, the specifics of what that might entail don't seem to matter, no matter how bizarre — much to Cooper's endless amusement.

A post shared by Laura (@lauravstinder) on

"One guy asked me what I liked to do for fun, and I said, 'Make nail clipping mosaics and earwax candles.' And he didn’t even blink at that. He was just like, 'Oh, that’s cool,'" she recalls.

Like mosquitoes, indictments of Trump administration officials, and seasons of "The Big Bang Theory," these horny dudes just keep coming.

3. Except for maybe one thing.

While people with disproportionate dwarfism are a large, diverse group who experience the full human range of health outcomes, certain medical problems have a nasty habit of cropping up at the most inopportune times. Many of Cooper's friends have endured surgeries their entire lives. Cooper herself has been lucky — until one day she wasn't.

"My colon exploded," she says.

Cooper needed an emergency procedure that landed her in the hospital for a month. For the most part, she passed the time resting, recuperating, and enjoying the free incapacitating drugs. Until she got bored.

"I logged onto Tinder once when I was in the hospital," she says. "And he asked me how I was doing. I think my response was, 'I'm hooked up to eight bags of IV fluids and I have a huge gash on my stomach, how are you?'"

This, apparently, was a bridge too far for her anonymous admirer's delicate male sensibilities.

"He unmatched."

4. Men aren't immune from the weirdness.

Cooper started her feed with encouragement (and occasional contributions) from her friends who are little people, many of whom have similar dating app stories. And it's not just the women who get bizarre messages.

"Some of the guys get creepy stuff too," she says. While milder than the requests for driveway-clearing-after-a-Nor'easter-style sex and literal dick-measuring messages, "I've always wanted to hook up with a short man" turns out to be the far more polite but no less objectifying female version of same.

And as much as it's purported to be the Obvious Ultimate Fantasy of Every Man™ to be approached by horny, anonymous women on a daily basis, shockingly, it can be a bit of a mood killer when said women view you as "a dwarf-shaped sex toy."

"The guys are like, 'Mmm, no.'" Cooper says.

5. People expect you to be grateful for the attention, and you can get suspended — or even banned — for disabusing them of that notion.

When confronted with a stream of holy-crap-did-he-just-say-that-gah-of-course-he-just-did, Cooper is faced with two choices: She can either slink away meekly into the digital ether and ignore him, or she can use her wicked sense of humor to engage in hand-to-hand combat.

Unsurprisingly, she often chooses the latter.

A post shared by Laura (@lauravstinder) on

Her retorts have a tendency to surprise and confound her hopeful paramours, many of whom, she suspects, run crying to Tinder's invisible referees like a toddler who had his binky swiped. Rejection, it seems, wasn't part of their plan.

"I've been under review like six times," she says. "I log in, and I see that [red] screen, and I’m like, 'Aw, come on!'"

The suspensions can last anywhere from a few days to several weeks. Though she has no way of knowing for sure, Cooper suspects her jousting would be tolerated in a woman of average height, one who they haven't pegged as "desperate."

"It's usually when I turn them down that they unmatch and report me," she says sarcastically. "Because, you know, I’m not allowed to say 'no.'"

Meanwhile, the dudes who report her are allowed to continue bumping around Tinder despite the crude, objectifying, Axe-body-spray-tinged nonsense they vomit.

6. Cooper's experience is both the same shit every woman has to put up with on dating apps — and also completely 100% not.

Photo by Laura Cooper/Tinder.

Reading just a few of Cooper's messages pretty well illustrates the particular joy of navigating Tinder as an out and proud little person. Still, a quick glance at the Instagram account Tinder Nightmares suggests that women of all heights, sizes, religions, colors, and United MileagePlus Premiere statuses are subjected to horrifically gross man-bile on a minute-ly basis. Do people in Cooper's position really have it worse?

For perspective, I managed to track down former Tinder user and non-little person, Michelle D (name abridged to protect her privacy,) a health care worker based abroad. Michelle tells me she "almost never [got] very forward/over-sexualized messages" when she was on the app and regards her Tinder experience as generally "excellent." I showed her Cooper's Instagram feed. Her reaction was about as measured as you might expect:

"Fuuuck."

The messages were a shock. And Michelle says she rarely, if ever, got anything like them. Still, she explains that some of the behavior Cooper experiences in the app simply migrated to her real-life meetings with Tinder matches — often in uncomfortable, occasionally scary, ways.

"I feel that men can sometimes be less respectful because it's a Tinder hookup," Michelle explains. "Like they're more likely to push more outlandish or even risky sex stuff."

In that sense, Cooper's experience is less an aberration than one extreme end of a spectrum. An objectifying, dark-carnival, creepy spectrum.

7. Tinder's not all nightmarish dystopian hellscape — you can actually meet some nice people.

Miraculously, Cooper managed to weed through the pile of sentient phalluses with faces attached to snag a few dates with some actual human men, who, as it turns out, were kinda cool.

Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images.

"They just had interests and were easy to talk to. And they enjoyed my Tinder posts [on Instagram] too. They both followed me on it." She's also made a few Facebook and Instagram friends through the app. They continue to trade jokes and conversation, none of it about relative body part size or sex acts involving snow shovels.

Cooper especially likes to use Tinder when she travels. For the most part, she says, no matter where she goes, it's the same shit, different city. With one exception.

"Seattle was not bad," she says. "'Cause I think there are smarter people there. People that actually wanted to hang out or [have] real conversations with proper grammar and good spelling. It was refreshing. Like they were very clearly interested in me as a human."

8. But you always wonder what people's true intentions are.

A few positive experiences haven't been quite enough to restore her faith in Tinderkind. These days, Cooper can't help but approach new matches on the app with a certain wariness.

"I think I am going to always wonder if someone secretly has a fetish and just doesn’t say it," she admits. "So even if someone is decent, I tend to think, 'You’re not really decent.'"

The hospital stay was nearly a turning point for Cooper. Hopped up on pain medication and IV fluids, she was "too confused" to swipe in any direction. Yet, as she lay in bed by herself, counting down the hours, she found herself missing Tinder. The game. The trolling. The human connection — even the kind that involves pontificating on the similarities between "ur asshole and a 9-volt battery."

As it turned out, the feeling was mutual.

When she finally got home, she turned on her phone, only to find hundreds of messages waiting for her.

"It was just funny. It was like, 'Oh. They missed me.'"

On May 24, 2017, an Alamo Drafthouse movie theater in Austin, Texas, announced it would host a special screening of the new "Wonder Woman" movie — for women only.

Image via Clay Enos/Warner Bros.

"Apologies, gentlemen, but we're embracing our girl power and saying 'No Guys Allowed' for one special night at the Alamo Ritz," the theater wrote in a statement on its website.


The theater noted that the screening was open to all women — and would be helmed by an all-female staff.

"When we say 'Women (and People Who Identify As Women) Only,' we mean it. Everyone working at this screening — venue staff, projectionist, and culinary team — will be female."

But of course, it's 2017. And we can't have nice things anymore.

A Facebook post promoting the event was swiftly descended upon by Men on the Internet, who were furious that one thing in the world wasn't for them.

All post screenshots via Facebook.

Thankfully, like the legendary Amazon warrior herself, the Drafthouse and its crack social media staff came ready to fight.

The Drafthouse team spent the 24 hours following the announcement engaging in a glorious bit of jujitsu with its trolls, doing things like these:

Answering their ridiculous rhetorical questions!

Calling transphobes' bluffs!

And fending off charges of reverse sexism ... with jokes!

Needless to say, the decision to hold the screening also won a lot of praise from the theater's fans on social media.

There was also praise for how the Drafthouse responded to the haters.

Guys, men, dudes, bros: It's really not so hard not to make everything all about us.

We've already got major professional sports, the vast majority of speaking characters on film, and 100% of our presidents to date. We can give women a day to celebrate an iconic, boundary-breaking character and role model for several generations of women.

Thankfully, lots of men are already totally cool with this, as evidenced by the dozens who jumped into the comments to defend the screening.

In the meantime, props to the Alamo Drafthouse for holding the line.

From the looks of it, the trolls aren't spoiling the ladyparty.

Quite the opposite, in fact:

And kudos to the chain for doubling down nationwide.

"Providing an experience where women truly reign supreme has incurred the wrath of trolls only serves to deepen our belief that we're doing something right," says Morgan Hendrix, Alamo Drafthouse creative manager.

"As a result, we will be expanding this program across the country and inviting women everywhere to join us as we celebrate this iconic superheroine in our theaters."

Kevin Smith is a successful screenwriter, filmmaker, actor, podcast mogul, and nerd king.

You may know him as Silent Bob from his films "Clerks" and "Dogma."

Kevin Smith in 2015. Photo by Craig Barritt/Getty Images for New York Magazine.


He's also a father, and his latest film, "Yoga Hosers," stars none other than his 17-year-old daughter, Harley Quinn Smith.  

Harley Quinn Smith and her co-star Lily Rose Depp in "Yoga Hosers." Photo via Kevin Smith/YouTube.

Harley Quinn (who, yes, is named after the comic book character) is already semi-famous for being the daughter of a famous director, but she's been thrust further into the spotlight by starring in the film.

Unfortunately, that makes her a bigger target for harassment and disgusting comments.

When Kevin Smith saw a nasty comment on his daughter's Instagram, he reacted like any father would. Well ... almost.

What it's like to be my daughter: 17 year old @harleyquinnsmith_ received this message simply for the heinous crime of posting a pic of herself on @instagram. I have zero clue what the reference to #TheMatrix is all about but, wow - way to unload on a teen girl because YOU have nothing to do in life. But even though I should be apoplectic about it, my kid thought it was funny. "I'd be mad if I had a tiny dick and anonymous voice too," she said, bemused by the bitterness. But here's a nickel's worth of free advice for folks like this Troll: if you hate me (or my kid) this much, the better use of your time is to make YOUR dreams come true, instead of slamming others for doing the same. The best revenge is living insanely well - so if you wanna get back at a 17 year old girl for the grievous crime of enjoying her life, the best way to do it is to succeed in your OWN existence. Show the world WHY we should be paying attention to you instead of anyone else. Because randomly attacking others merely communicates how creatively and emotionally bankrupt you are. You think you have something to offer the world but others are getting all the attention? Don't bitch or punish the world: just create. Create something nobody's ever seen before and there is a good chance the world will notice you. Attacking teen girls on the Internet is the saddest form of masturbation that exists and requires no discernible skill or talent. You want attention? Don't make yourself mad, make something original and fun. Because if you're not being useful in this world you're being useless. Don't be useless: go make stuff that makes people happy! #KevinSmith #HarleyQuinnSmith #YogaHosers

A photo posted by Kevin Smith (@thatkevinsmith) on

“What it’s like to be my daughter: 17 year old Harley Quinn Smith received this message simply for the heinous crime of posting a pic of herself on Instagram,” Smith began. “I have zero clue what the reference to #TheMatrix is all about but, wow – way to unload on a teen girl because YOU have nothing to do in life. But even though I should be apoplectic about it, my kid thought it was funny. ‘I’d be mad if I had a tiny d*** and anonymous voice too,’ she said, bemused by the bitterness.” (All emphasis mine.)

As a professional comedy writer — and huge fan of profanity — Kevin Smith was all set for a curse-filled smackdown of epic proportions.

But instead, Smith went with a different approach. One that turned the focus to the commenter's own life:

"But here's a nickel's worth of free advice for folks like this Troll: if you hate me (or my kid) this much, the better use of your time is to make YOUR dreams come true, instead of slamming others for doing the same.

The best revenge is living insanely well - so if you wanna get back at a 17 year old girl for the grievous crime of enjoying her life, the best way to do it is to succeed in your OWN existence. Show the world WHY we should be paying attention to you instead of anyone else. Because randomly attacking others merely communicates how creatively and emotionally bankrupt you are.

You think you have something to offer the world but others are getting all the attention?Don't bitch or punish the world: just create. Create something nobody's ever seen before and there is a good chance the world will notice you.

Attacking teen girls on the Internet is the saddest form of masturbation that exists and requires no discernible skill or talent. You want attention? Don't make yourself mad, make something original and fun. Because if you're not being useful in this world you're being useless. Don't be useless: go make stuff that makes people happy!"





For Kevin Smith, encouraging an online troll to create something and make people happy is the perfect way to go.

Photo by Rich Polk/Getty Images for IMDb.

After all, he was once just a movie-obsessed kid from New Jersey, hanging out at comic stores and pontificating about life. Then he made a film starring his friends and became one of the most influential indie filmmakers of the 1990s — perhaps of all time.

He found his happiness not by trying to make other people miserable, but by trying to delight them and make them laugh.

Studies show that cyberbullying is often the result of low self-esteem and loneliness. It's also been shown that creativity boosts self-esteem.

Maybe Smith knows that. Maybe he doesn't. But we all know you can't fight fire with fire.

The bully went low, and Kevin Smith went remarkably high.