Internet Trolls — Dark side of Social Media
“The Internet is so big, so powerful and pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life” ~ Andrew Brown
Internet trolls think of themselves as legends (lol) of social media and consider themselves as provocation and humiliation geniuses. These faceless, nameless, cowards who self-identified themselves as trolls score extremely high in following personality traits: narcissism, psychopath, Machiavellianism or ‘Dark Triad’ and not to be ignored, sadism. They are not only just trolls but vocal, malicious people filled with hatred and insults whenever they disagree with something or someone. They attack you for doing what any sane person usually does. Like, living a good life, having an opinion, being too happy, being loved by many. They feed their ego with responses, reactions, attention. They don’t even really have to have a reason to hate or bully someone. They just do it because it gives them a sadistic pleasure. Your attention and reaction is their fuel. What makes such trolls more vicious? Anonymity and freedom of being anonymous incite them to convert themselves as haters. Picking up on people and imposing their complex on those people gives them satisfaction. If their targets do not respond to their various attempts on getting a response, they start using aggressive terms, accuse you for doing something you never did, talk worse about things that are precious or sacred to you (like your faith, your friends), say negative things about your personal life. Basically, going to the lowest levels for that one response from your end. After numerous attempts and uncountable accusations, slurs and name calling, the victim usually loses all their patience and temper and starts giving them reactions. Trolls think that they have won some sort of battle.
Nowadays it has become impossible to counter the views and put our opinion freely on social media platforms. The social media psychopaths cannot digest the fact that someone is openly and fearlessly putting up their views. Being on the social media for more than four years I have experienced many types of trolling. Frankly speaking there are people who just can’t differentiate between trolling, abusing and harassing a person for their amusement. Their gluttony keeps on increasing and the sadistic pleasure they receive satisfies them. Can’t say whether they actually get contented or it increases the lust to do this more often.
At times I have seen healthy trolling which is completely based on facts and the person has no intention to offend but to enlighten them. But with time and weak cyber laws in our country, many narcissistic people have taken trolling to another level. Casually giving rape threats is one of the finest examples of this. They just can’t differentiate between trolling and harassing a person, cross their line of dignity, stoop low and get involved in such sadistic pleasures.
Group harassment and trolling is the new concept which has emerged with time on social media platforms. Bunch of people having a herd mentality, that are self centered, egoistic, with sadistic lives attempt to have irrelevant arguments with an intent to humiliate and upset people. They influence other wannabe trolls like them to attack their target(s) by outnumbering and spamming their notifications tab. This vicious troll mob, one after the other, target their victims till the point the victim totally loses their cool and starts hitting back at them, mostly in the same manner or tone and this is EXACTLY what they want, a negative reaction so that they can defend themselves by claiming that the other person (their victim) has attacked them too. The troll gang, known for victim shaming their victims, when they call them out will be the first one to play victim after getting an aggressive response or when the victim hits back at them and starts getting support from other anti trolls. We are living in the world where stress, depression, mental illness are now a common issues (and according to most of these faceless, coward trolls, these are mere excuses of playing victim). In this stressfully busy life, when we get a little free time, we try to relax our mind by socializing on various social media platforms, keeping our views, taking a stand for something or someone, having a healthy conversation; because who doesn’t want to sleep happily and with gratitude at the end of the day? But what if everything around you starts turning negative? When bunch of faceless cowards try to let you down repeatedly, with intent to shatter your confidence, target you to make you feel miserable and humiliated and for giving them a sadistic pleasure. Their delusions and hatred becomes so strong that they don’t even realize them it’s a virtual and the real world is outside these 6inch cell phone or 16 inches laptop. They start envying for the other person’s peace of mind and try to do their best to spoil it. So for them, the only way to satisfy their chimera and delusion is to talk negative about the people they envy and spread negativity. They get ready to go so much against a person that they cross the boundaries of morality and stoop to their lowest. I think these people need some sort of counseling on how to draw a line of dignity and stop living in fallacy. In reality they suffer with a traumatic phase of not being acceptable by themselves only. They know the reality but cheap thrills are drugs for them. So I hope they just learn to accept that they cannot be a part of our life or be like us rather than living is misconception and chimera.
In the world where we thrive for happiness, try hard to be kind towards people, feel the gratitude of being alive, thanking people for being a part of our lives; such negativity makes me feel sad about the type of human being we are becoming with time. To conclude, I just want to say, try not to let the freedom of your youth convince you that making people feel bad is more fun than making them feel good.
