A celebrity, usually of the thespian variety, posts a heartfelt yet misleading comment on Twitter. An anonymous account, bereft of elegance and charm (or grammar, for that matter), pokes a big hole in the argument. And the celeb, with adequate élan and poise, retorts: “Begone, y’crude troll!”
This is a scene often played out in our social media timelines. Yet, a minor point is rarely discussed — what is a troll? Was this account really one?
In today’s ‘aboveground’ social networks, the term troll is casually invoked. However, it’s more-often-than-not utterly misused. A troll (of the non-mythic variety) is an entity that seeks to bait and disrupt. A troll is a provocateur, someone tugging at the earnestness and decency in an online discussion to make it disorderly. Only an attempt at derailing conversations using egregious and irrelevant content — to rile up the conversants — is trolling. Historically, through the nascent public internet and even now in certain circles, that and only that is considered to constitute trolling, just ‘for the lulz’.
To put it more precisely, abhorrent forms of hateful behaviour online — in the form of misogyny, racism, communalism, and so many other isms — is not and has never been trolling.
Yet, whenever some ‘eminent’ personality makes a grandiose but superficial statement and an anonymous person vivisects it, the personality often shrugs off the person as a ‘troll’. What does this disrespect, or even fear, of the anonymous — of trolls, real or perceived — say about us? Is it that we, a civilisation that espouses debate as the highest form of social interaction, have gotten so complacent that a dissenting voice, a voice outside the Overton Window of intellectual online deliberations, makes us feel vulnerable? Is it because it’s much easier to assert ‘he’s a troll’ (suggesting an amorphous term with an unpleasantly negative connotation) rather than admit that my blue-ticked, million-followed opinion might possibly be incorrect?
Towards anonymity in general, there is evidently a systemic distrust and suspicion, bordering on hatred, in the internet of today. Why has the right to exercise online anonymity become so alien now?
Revealing to the internet your real name and face was never the norm. At least, until the past decade. But now the scene (at least in the most ‘publicly acceptable’ forums) has unrecognisably changed. People, even children, showcase every aspect of their lives to a limitless world. An unknown person brings them food, drops them to and from work, school, and places of leisure, and listens to their expressed thoughts and emotions; relatively unknown people see most intimate details of their lives, and even the ‘requirements’ and desires for a love life are shared online. The concept of sharing fingerprints and retinal images with distant corporations — for the convenience of easily unlocking their tech toys — isn’t considered scary, or disturbing. In fact, a person who chooses not to show their face to the web has become the unknown, a stereotyped bogeyman. The stage is reminiscent of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”, where everyone belongs to everybody and a modicum of modesty, prudity, and self-effacement is frowned upon as being offensive.
The right to maintain online anonymity is essential, and must be preserved, especially as free speech becomes costlier than ever. As censorship continues continuously rearing its all-powerful head, the value of the anonymous profile exponentially increases. The claim isn’t that anonymity can help you escape censorship; it can’t, especially against powerful institutional authorities. IP tracking and other invasive methods can easily reveal your identity. But it is definitely a first step, at least in the court of public judgement — where one expressed opinion, sufficiently controversial, can irreparably damage one’s academic, professional, and social reputation. The lack of anonymity keeps claiming victims, like the Iranian Instagram model charged with blasphemy last week. Or James Damor, of the notorious Ideological Echo Chamber memo at Google. Heck, even Nicolaus Copernicus published his greatest work anonymously for fear of the sacred status quo.
When the status quo is such that public opinion is paramount, where discourse is deemed enlightened only within certain parameters (set for and by the established discussants), anonymous accounts and even ‘trolls’ are necessary and essential. They promote, or at least seek to incite, debates in scenarios in which the ‘correct’ public response seems to be a foregone conclusion. In umpteen feel-good social media moments (where emotions often tend to overturn reality), they are often the ones to break free of the hivemind and present unpleasant truths. In online parlance, they break the circle jerk.
