Monday Musings 261: The Menace of trolls
The flipside of open access social media is the evolution of a new
creature called the troll. A troll as the Wikipedia defines is a ‘’...is a
person who sows discord on the internet by starting arguments or upsetting
people by posting inflammatory, extraneous messages....attacks people....”
Following are the defining features of a troll.
A troll hides behind a mob. He is like the faceless member of the herd
of yesteryears who seeks strength in his anonymity and solace in his being
unknown. He is the neighbourhood bully who lurks just around the corner often
with a group of lumpen elements. I also suspect he is psychologically deeply
disturbed and must have had a history of attention deficit. He is battling his
insignificant past and most likely even more insignificant future (someone who
is busy trolling is unlikely to achieve anything meaningful anytime soon) by
attacking those are genuinely significant enough to have attracted trolls like
the swarm of bees.
A troll expresses without processing. A troll rarely cross checks facts
verifies truthfulness and authenticity. Actually he has nothing to do with
truth – his draws fun in the attack. The grounds of the attack be damned. My
hunch is that a troll enjoyed in his childhood such random games like plucking
the feathers off butterflies, throw stones at stray dogs and kill lizards and
rats. Since such opportunities do not arise much these days so trolling is a
close substitute if only even more dumber.
A troll has an opinion in anything and everything. A successful troll
has something to say even when he has no clue on the subject at hand. Actually
my sense is that he actually knows nothing about anything at all because anyone
who has any credible knowledge about anything would not do something as silly
as offering unsolicited advice or comment. Restraint – as a word, ability and
attitude is unknown to a troll.
A troll is touchy and hence aggressive. A troll has very poor threshold
for disagreement. He is touchy about his views and his position in general. My
sense is that he suffers from low self esteem and was most likely thrashed by
his teachers and parents and always compared with his mates on counts of
decency and obedience. As a troll this is payback time for him. He will
criticise anyone for anything. Most of his hurt is imaginary but his digital
anger is real.
A troll is does not know history. If the whatsapp and FB forward on
themes like politics, religion, and culture and how can I forget, patriotism is
anything to go by – it is abundantly clearly he flunked in history. Not only is
history flawed, uneducated and deeply bigoted, the fact that he wears this as a
badge of honour makes him actually dangerous.
Imagine a likert scale where on one end is a mischief monger and on the
other hand is a nut case and imagine
someone with characteristics of both and then imagine such a creature as a
digital organism. That my friend is a troll for you! He may be the person who
is on his device next to you. Give him a slap and send him back to school.
Guru
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