Understanding Trolls
There May Be Something Real In Their Hatred After All
One of the oddest things that I have found in crypto communities is the extent of severely impaired mental health of many of the so-called internet trolls. Due to a variety of factors, most likely my filing of court documents last week compelling certain persons to testify to establish my own postulation that my 2017 project was hijacked deliberately (wherein such trolls were “hired” by media agencies to do the grunt work), we’ve recently begun to see a return of some of the trolls:
At first, when I came across these sorts I was really puzzled. For a start, I have never met anyone who says things like “kek, I’m joshin’” nor do I frequently engage with people who fantasise about real-life adventures online. This, after all, is the stuff of children. As children we often fantasise about what we might do as adults, but once we obtain adulthood, we leave such fantasies at the door in favour of the practical burden of life itself (which turns out to be a little less heroic and a little more arduous than we had initially hoped for.) To which the question becomes: What kind of adult fantasises about adult problems and scenarios and talks like a child?
I have long maintained since around August 2017 that many internet trolls seemed to have the disposition of mind of someone who is severely mentally or physically retarded. It’s an intuitive guess based on the extent to which the minds of their hosts seem so negatively engaged. Fantasies about hurting, killing, ruining, destroying etc. others one would more commonly associate with higher rates of suicide as well (after all, if you are likely to fantasise about harming someone else, more than likely you are likely to try and actualise that harm on yourself at some point in time.)
After searching around for the commonality of between attempted suicidal actualisation and disability, it became apparent that there were indeed much higher rates of patients trying to harm or kill themselves with disabilities as per ones without such hindrances. The rates were unaffected by either mental or physical disability, but were apparent with respect to there being a disability in the first place or not. Specifically, people with disabilities were four times as likely to harm themselves as those without disabilities:
Disability has long-term practical and social consequences, and is associated with mental disorders, in particular with depressive disorder. In this paper we investigate disability in relation to suicide attempts …Those with some form of disability were four times more likely to have attempted suicide after adjusting for significant sociodemographic and socioeconomic correlates: female, not married, not employed, being in debt and having a physical health problem.
The preponderance of internet trolls with long-term disabilities may be a much bigger problem than we think if this is indeed the case. Numerous studies show that malign and malicious attacks on individuals raises the likelihood of suicide among even sane people, too. If this is the case, the internet is becoming somewhat of a breeding ground for the mentally and physically retarded of the world to take out their frustrations and pent-up anger on those without such afflictions and thereby cause the general standard of personal happiness to drop over time. This is clearly a controversial thing to say, and for sure, no studies have yet been carried out on the link between internet trolls and retarded patients. But the suggested link does answer numerous questions, not least of all how the internet troll concerned has so much time to carry out such attacks, often working in chat rooms almost relentlessly 20 hours a day. Simply, they are at home, confined to their bedroom chairs.
With respect to cryptocurrencies, there is another indication that internet trolls might be mentally or physically handicapped and therefore also suicide prone as per my initial intuition. They cannot manage financial affairs well and have low real-life coping skills. Furthermore, such difficulties appear more likely to create the type of stimulation that brings about suicidal tendencies:
Difficulty in managing ones financial affairs (budgeting and paying bills) and dealing with paperwork (writing letters and filling in forms) appear to have a greater influence on the likelihood of suicide attempts than difficulties in carrying out personal care, practical or household activities. Helping people with activities with a high cognitive content as well as with more physical activities is an important element in a suicide prevention strategy.
Cryptocurrencies, which are highly volatile financial instruments with extensive Beta variations, would then appear the most inappropriate investments for such individuals. At the same time, however, they may be the only investments such individuals can access and participate in. Further still, trolling may be one of the few professions that such people can do competently, well, and unsupervised. Both these observations are extremely alarming to anyone who cares about the future of creating a harmonious virtual society.
My point in publishing this post is not to be vindictive to anyone, and not to get back at anyone for things they have said about me etc. I personally don’t care at all. It is to raise a long-held, often-considered idea that there may be a substantial link between mentally- and physically-retarded people, suicidal idealisation and actualisation and internet trolling. Furthermore, such effects may, if left unhindered, contribute to a substantial extent to a moral decline effect in society. It is very clear that further study of internet trolls and psychological healthcare is going to be required in the future if we are to create a liveable and productive virtual world.
