Medium Original: Is Online Trolling Really Just Trolling At First?

Based on the statistics, one third of millennial Americans admit to being Internet trolls, but what began this activities at first? Has it changed?

Do you remember who created the Internet?

The internet was created by a group of scientists because they wanted to interact with one another for professional purposes. The interactions with others became the primary idea of social media.

The internet became a new communication medium for many people. People created discussion forums and chat rooms for exchanging, discussing, or even debating, argument issues.

Unfortunately, there were some people that use the Internet as a medium to practiced their unpopular opinions. They spread their “good opinions” over the Internet while they are not as professional as the others. Most of the time, their emotions get involved into the conversation to get the best of them. They attack other people who challenge their idea, beliefs and opinions.

Many people call this activity as trolling.

Trolling In The Past

In fact, there is some interesting facts about trolling.

In the past, some “trolling” activities came from the professional people who wanted correct wrong assumptions of others, who promoted “unpopular opinions” online.

This group of people were honest. They would ask others with questions to begin with the conversation. The questions, most of the time, were meant to educate them or to make them reconsider their assumptions. In other words, these people would like to help others to think that their assumptions were based on the inaccurate information or beliefs.

Consequently, some of the trolling activities were meant to generate a good discussion, so that fewer people would get “brain-washed” by the wrong assumptions or false claims from the certain group of bad people who tried to take over the information over the internet.

Today Trolling Activities

Unfortunately, the activities are becoming more complicated now.

There are certain group of people are taking advantage of this activities. They attempt to make the false claims and wrong assumptions by insulting others online with the questions. The goal for them is to spread their false claims across the internet, to make people confused, and to make the real facts questionable.

This makes people, generally speaking, don’t like the trolling activities. However, you need to remember that:

• You are the one responsible for how to react.
• You are the only one responsible to choose what you would like to reply to.
• You don’t have to overreact the trolling activities.
• You don’t have to be afraid the online trolls.

This article is originally published on Medium.

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About the Author

Tony Yeung is a digital marketing specialist and the owner of Apartment Number 2, a consultancy focused on helping entrepreneurs and marketers see results with SEO, social media, and content marketing. Apartment Number 2 has worked with a range of clients from Publishing Company and Medical Company to a new startups.