The Troll Who Lives Under the Comments

Internet Trolls

What are Internet Trolls?

We all grew up reading stories about repulsive, beastly creatures called trolls that lurked under dark bridges, ready to make trouble for the protagonists of our favorite bedtime stories. In real life, these creatures may not exist, but on the internet, they hide in the comment boards of every web page.

Trolls hide out in dark corners of the internet, showing their repulsiveness through their inflammatory comments. Their real life appearance is not important here. The true troll that they are on the inside comes out to play on the internet.

What is Trolling?

Trolling refers to posting provocative, bullying and negative comments on the comments section of news sites, blogs, Youtube, and social media sites.

Some of these internet trollers make harmless comments, some, spout their negative opinions of a person or topic. Internet trolling is the cyber bullying of the adult world.

What Techniques Do Trolls Use to Accomplish Their Objectives?

Trolls use put-downs, insults, name calling, personal attacks, questioning of the victims motives, bullying, harassment, loose interpretations , threats and inaccurate facts.

What sort of person would do this and why?

Trolling comments elicit strong emotional reactions from their targets or others reading the comment boards. Researchers in Canada decided to study internet trolls, and they found, unsurprisingly, that trolls exhibit high levels of narcissism and sadism. Trolls are on a constant search for feelings of power and derive pleasure from seeing others suffer. The study stated that “cyber- trolling seems to be an internet manifestation of everyday sadism.”

The internet makes it easy for trolls to hide in the shadows anonymously, and cause damage to others, or try to cause damage. They rarely face any punishment or real confrontation because no one knows who they are or where to find them off of the message boards of their trolling grounds. It gives these predators a sense of power, attention, and pleasure.

Who Do Trolls Target?

Anyone that expresses strong or controversial opinions online. Some trolls focus on one category of people. For example, there is a class of trolls that tease the families and friends of murder victims.

Other trolls exist solely for the purpose of trolling other trolls because they find the act of trolling offensive. However, It can be more than just offensive.

Internet trolling can be scary.

There is a practice called doxxing, where the trolls post the personal information, including the address and telephone numbers of their victims publicly. This is especially scary in cases where threats are made to the trolling victim.

An example of this is in the “Gamergate” controversy, where Anita Sarkeesian , a cultural critic commenting on the negative portrayal of women in video games was inundated by a barrage of trolling comments. Many of the threats were of bodily harm to Sarkeesian or her family, threats of burglary, beatings, and rape. There was even a threat of a mass shooting at a college where she was supposed to be speaking.

What is being done about trolling?

The most famous internet troll of recent times may be ViolentaCrez, a Reddit user, who according to Gawker, posted comments filled with rape, misogyny, incest and racism. The Reddit troll, Michael Brutsch, a programmer from Texas was subsequently fired from his job when his troll identity was revealed.

From a legal perspective, In 2012, a bill was passed by Arizona state legislators to limit bullying, offensive language, and harassment using any device with internet connectivity. Despite its potential positive use to curb troll behavior, opponents are concerned that this bill is a major limit to First Amendment freedom of speech rights, and that it could be applied to everything from a negative comment on a message board, to Op-Ed pieces, published on the internet. This bill could put those that are found to have “trolled” the internet in jail for up to 25 years.

In the UK, a law to punish those who attack on the internet was passed last year. It is called the Malicious Communications Act. Currently, about four to five trolls a day are convicted. These are seriously increased numbers, up from the approximately two a day that were convicted last year.

In New Zealand, just this year, a statute was passed through parliament, imposing a minimum sentence of two years for those convicted under the Harmful Digital Communications act. The act covers harmful or inflammatory comments that can be true or false information and also covers intimate visual recordings or photos.

Wrap Up

The internet makes it easy for trolls to hide in the shadows anonymously, and try to cause damage to others. They rarely face any punishment or real confrontation because no one knows who they are or where to find them off of the message boards of their trolling grounds. It gives these people quick, momentary satisfaction without seeing the consequences to others, or feeling any negative consequences themselves.

This was made possible by information gathered from The Atlantic monthly, the guardian, telegraph.co.uk, psychology today, BBC, Business Insider, Gawker, and a study done by the University of Manitoba called “Trolls Just Want to Have Fun.”