Portland’s “Cigarette Bro-Poet” Gets Profiled By One Of His Cyber-Bullies

Remember Collin Yost? You might know him better as the "Cigarette Bro-Poet"—or as one web journal referred to him, "Brobert Frost."

Before any of those unfortunate nicknames took hold, Yost was just a guy writing poetry on Instagram. But in August, he earned the title of "Portland's most hated poet" after a Tweet ridiculing his self-published poetry collection went viral:

Insults poured in from across the internet. Someone even started a satirical Twitter account dedicated to mocking Yost as "a bland white guy who thinks my one mission on Earth is to share the edgy poems written from my limited, privileged, unoriginal point of view with humanity."

New York-based writer Laura Yan was one of the people who took part in the gleeful evisceration. Two months later, she caught up with Yost for a piece published today by culture blog The Outline.

Expressing contrition for her own mean Tweets—while confessing to her own misadventures in versification—the piece is part profile, part exploration of online jerkdom.

Yost—who we learn grew up in a small town in Ohio and works as a marine scientist—says the experience of being "cyber-bullied" by a bunch of strangers was "mind-numbing" and that he still wakes up afraid to check his phone.

Yan also speaks with Izzy Leslie, the woman who sent the initial Tweet. She was bullied herself; someone even tried hacking into her Facebook account. Looking back, she takes a softer tone than she did when speaking to The Oregonian in August, when she called Yost "a woman-hater."

Yan doesn't quite push Yost on his perceived misogyny, and he brushes off the criticism by saying "'you're a pretentious dick and your writing is trash. please stop. hope you die' isn't criticism." In the end, Yost came out of the episode with 5,000 more Instagram followers. And he's still writing poetry. In fact, this week, he'll even write you a custom poem if you send him a private message.