Internet trolling is the cousin to cyber bullying. The objective of a troll is to get reactions from their 'victims', to get emotional responses from them. Trolls use different strategies like name calling, lies, exaggeration, threats, inaccurate figures and facts, personal attacks and so on to achieve their objectives.
An Internet troll is defined as
a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting quarrels or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a newsgroup, forum, chat room, or blog) with the intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal, on-topic discussion, often for the troll's amusement.
The psyche of a troll
Trolling is another antisocial behavior closely related to sadism, psychopathy, machiavellism and narcissism, but in this case of internet trolls, they have the veil of internet to hide behind as anonymous
It is an act of deriving pleasure from hurting others emotionally. The disinhibiting effect makes it as an easy entry for anyone with some level of emotional bankruptcy, as an internet troll can keep an anonymous status while commenting disintegrating, inciting, violent messages. The internet trolls use their online activities to compensate for their own apparent lack of confidence by deriving pleasure in killing off someone else's.
And just like the Psychopaths, internet trolls act on impulses. The act on the spur of the moments without giving consideration to the consequences, and they rarely care about consequences while achieving a false feelings of self importance in the process.
Effect of Internet trolling
Online cruelty and aggression take away people's freedom of expression. Trollers use their activities to induce anger, anxiety, fear, distrust, depression and even to the extreme, the thought of suicide on their victims
There have been different cases of suicide caused online bullying and threats.
How to take care of trolls - Don't feed them
In the case of physical bullying, standing up for yourself and becoming the bully's bully can work to a very large extent. But that may not be the case in internet trolling, becoming a troll's troll will escalate the situation and will work against you if you don't possess their traits of antisocial behaviours and psychopathy nature. Since they are less emotional and lack remorse, they easily play on and intensifies others' emotions. It is their game and the internet is their safe playground, engaging them intensifies things and turn you to their object of amusements.
An internet troll don't normally have a personal issue with you, it is just him trying to feed his sadism and a desperately needed feeling of self importance. Internet troll is simply seeking a kind of rewarding feeling or satisfaction, he believes he can only get at the expense of others. Ignore him and you starve him, he most likely will not waste much time before seeking out a more rewarding prey.
Thank you for reading.
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References
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