Fighting Trolls Off While Mourning in The Internet Wrestling Community.
When it comes to trolling, the internet is a mixed bag when it comes to responses. It varies based upon the topic, severity, tastefulness, and even those involved. Trolling is an activity usually done anonymously over the internet which sees the troll say something provocative to gain a response from someone else, whether it be to anger them or falsely reaffirm them.
When it comes to trolling, it happens everywhere, even in areas of sensitivity. This includes death as Phillips points out in This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things, “Rather than providing a snarling, sociopathic counterpoint to mainstream media, then, Facebook memorial page trolls (RIP trolls for short) enact a grotesque pantomime of precisely the corporate logic that transforms tragedy into business opportunity — further blurring the ostensibly clear-cut line between those who troll and those who do not.” He explains the malintent behind the RIP trolls.
In the Internet Wrestling Community, fans are a lot more defensive of the community as it holds a soft stigma against it. So, when someone attacks or trolls the community after a loss, people get up in arms. Over the past week one of (if not) the most famous wrestling journalists, Dave Meltzer, lost his father to a brief bout of cancer at the age of 90. The news was shared on the wrestling subreddit, Squared Circle, where it was met with mostly mourning and condolences. However, like most tragic subjects, it was met with some trolling/distasteful comments. The RIP trolls do this to get a rise, but also to further an agenda they have in some cases.
Dave Meltzer is known for reporting on wrestling news and rumors and for rating wrestling matches. He rates the matches on a scale of 0 to 5 stars, sometimes going to negative star ratings in the case of bad matches. He has also on 4 occasions rate matches above 5 stars (as a way to say they are the best of the best), two of which occurred this year between the wrestlers Kenny Omega and Kazuchika Okada in a match they had in January (6 stars) and the rematch they had in June (6.25 stars).
For the reason of distasteful activities and other activities that cause problems, Squared Circle has Mods to keep the subreddit in order. In the thread about Meltzer’s father, there was no exception.
Aside from mod intervention, fans also make use of reddit’s down voting system to partially hide other distasteful or seemingly distasteful comments. There are occasions where users fail to word statements in a way that is clear to everyone as to whether or not they were being factious.
This shows that RIP trolling is frowned upon and not something people will stand idle by for, no matter the circumstance.
