Friday, January 4, 2013

My Psychological Theory on Internet Trolls

Twitter and facebook can be fun to crack jokes and quips on celebrities, make smart ass comments in response to blog links, debate with others on why your favorite singer/songwriter should win a Grammy. I think it is perfectly okay to voice your opinion and wise cracks when someone posts something stupid. But it is all fun and games until a troll crawls in front of a fake picture and pull what I like to call "Attention Stunts". First lets take a refresher course on what trolls and internet trolls are.

 Trolls- Supernatural being in Norse mythology. It is said that they dwell in isolated areas away from normal people. For example, mountains, caves and under bridges. They are rarely described as helpful or friendly and in fact are very mean. They are slow, dim witted, and stupid. Late at night they crawl from out of their homes and steal farm animals, break property, and harass human beings. They are insanely afraid of light and when light is flashed upon them they run away frightend.

Internet Trolls- Beings who posts inflammatory, insulting, extraneous, or off topic messages in online communities, such as forums, blogs, chat rooms, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response. It is to disrupt normal on topic discussions. Unlike trolls in folklore, internet trolls don't hide under bridges and caves, they hide behind fake avatars found on google images.

 Just like trolls in mythology, when brought to the light or exposed for who they are internet trolls run and hide. Most internet trolls are depressed, angry, or lonely people who are getting either bullied behind the screen or feel as though they are not a factor of importance in their normal lives. Most of them have extremely low self esteem which is why they post fake avatars on their profiles of either models wearing little to no clothing trying giving others in cyber space the impression that it is actually them in the picture. Some of them post avatars of celebrities or comedic, funny pictures to keep the curiosity of who they are at bay from their followers.
  Many internet trolls bully others constantly to keep the attention off of trauma that is going on in their personal lives.
  The best way to deal with internet trolls is to simply block or ban them from your blog, forum, or social network accounts. They are very unhappy people who are in dire need of attention, love, and mental help. I actually feel sorry for them however there was a time when I did feed into it and go to all out war with them. Just like a mythical troll the more you feed them the more they keep coming back. Responding and showing any kind of emotional response to their mischief will only cause them to continue to wreak havoc.
  There are internet trolls for each category of people:

Celebrity Trolls- These are internet trolls that constantly attack a particular celebrity or celebrities for no reason at all. The only reason why these trolls attack celebrities is basically because they don't like their music. So they tag them in tweets, forums and blogs all day and all night long. (Lil' Kim and Beyonce stans are very known for doing this).

Bully Trolls- These are trolls that lurk social networks day and night perusing accounts to just nit pick and make fun of people. Either the person in the avatar they are attacking is overweight, wears his/her hair a certain way or just posted their opinion. They nit pick day and night on this particular person and get their mindless sheep to do it too.

Night Trolls- These are trolls that come out on social networking sites late at night during off peak hours. They find random people to harass, stalk, and insult up until the wee hours of the morning. When the person check their account the next day, they are confused to see hundreds of people with fake avatars in their mentions hurling insults at them for no reason at all.

Photograph Trolls- Photograph trolls are trolls who have a fake avatars on their profile but love to steal people with real avatars and use photoshop to enhance their photos. They particularly like to enhance their features and then they post them all over the social networking account to get laughs. This can be very irritating because who would want their pictures being slung all over the net?

   I hope my psychological theory and case study of Internet Trolls help you'll. You can never get rid of internet trolls. Unfortunately, like HIV/AIDS there is no cure for them. The best vaccine of prevention is to ignore them, don't give a response and just simply block them as soon as you see that they are commenting ridiculous insults.
  I hope this helps! =)

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