It’s easy to troll somebody who generally assumes the worst.
Today in our political climate we have many trolls. And in our age of the internets, many people seem generally traumatized and fearing the world is going to end any second now. Something like that.
There are lots of vague and ambiguous definitions out there, but I’ll define trolling behavior as a behavior intended to diminish the quality of content and its creators via derogatory or ad hominem attacks (on a side note, WordPress wants me to change “hominem” to “Eminem”…talk about trolling…). Content could be anything from dialogue in a chat room to a movie or some other larger-scale project.
Trolls aren’t critics. Trolling isn’t criticism. Trolling’s a take down or a verbal shove notifying another of their “inherent” low value because their choices are futile and pointless. What the trolled think is uninteresting and thus, what they are is uninteresting; a troll’ll let ya know. Losers.
It’s perverse, but trolling also seems like another way of coping. You know how when during tense moments some people laugh? Or is that just my wife. Jesus, I wish she wouldn’t do that…
Anyway, I think that’s the idea. Yeah, people are looking to take advantage, but maybe they’re also looking for control in general. Perhaps they feel an impending sense of doom like others do. For them, the reaction is to lash out. Perhaps people who troll want everyone to be quiet so as to somehow–in every irrational sense–not be noticed by the frivolous and seemingly random universe. Rather than calling for progress, those who troll see all these morons yelling at the top of their lungs and they’re just asking for it. Your peacock tails are gonna get us all killed!!
Maybe not.
One relatively recent study thinks we need to change the system underlying the format of our exchanges in order to mitigate and minimize trolls. Their research suggests anyone can become a troll. I generally lean in this type of direction myself.
For instance, I hate the smell of formaldehyde. And for years that was the smell I smelled in hospitals. It just corroded my interior façade and let my anxieties gush out. I’m not alone I think.
But now, as an adult, I’ve had experiences like being admitted to hospitals, staying in hospitals after my kids were born, and even working in them, and I don’t notice the smell anymore. Sterilization practices have changed and I guess with it the smells (<<shudder>>). While I’m still not super psyched to be in a hospital, the time spent in one is much better than before because a factor triggering a negative experience for me (the smell of formaldehyde) has been lessened.
Back to trolls. What are circumstances that lead to trolling? Well, what do we see on Twitter or Facebook, et al.? Doom and gloom. What do they report on the news? Doom and gloom. What do we see in movies and TV? (Dimly lit) Doom and gloom. Is it any wonder we have trolls? When everything around you is dark and scary there’s a few options: fright, flight, or fight.
Some people, especially psychologists it seems, like to talk about inter-tribal conflict as if it was a deep seated character trait of humans. Conflict over cooperation. Others like Steven Pinker agree but think we are still getting better at eliminating the things to fear like disease, war, and street-level violence. I wonder if as we make things “better” we eventually reach a psychological state related to a greater population density. This state is a relatively new and negative one. It sets in motion different emotional responses through a cascade of physiological factors that feed back into decisions and actions–all perhaps from the perception-fueled thought stream: Now that there’s more of us, how will I get enough food, soulmates, friends, etc? How will I ever be heard? Will I always struggle? Will I always be alone? I never developed into anything! And everyone else has! I never took the time to really understand something! There’s so much I didn’t know I wanted to do now that I see that perfect person in my social media feeds gallivanting around the planet! But I never had the patience and now I’m just a consumer! Fuck!!
Perhaps trolling is relatively common no matter what the scale. But I wonder if it intensifies as things get “better” because the balance of actual and perceived potential is heavily tipped toward perceived potential. In this way, maybe image crafting is kind of an indirect form of trolling. The grass is always greener. Things are never as they seem. Someone’s gonna pay. Some use guns. Some use the power of perception. The tease.
Trolls are mutating!
And, returning to classic trolling habitat, I guess for some chat rooms, every day is Halloween, because there’s so many trolls they’re more like haunted houses. Badum-ching…
So, be nice in there.
Eat some candy.
And Happy Halloween!
Want more seasonally appropriate topics? How ’bout some zombies?
1 Comment
Ebi, Odori Ebi · November 6, 2018 at 10:35 am
Quoting myself from a forum: “Come on, false rival!” from Dying Fetus – Second Skin. One of the levels of meaning I find in that song, helped by context of others on Reign Supreme, is that people are squandering their intelligence on trolling and ideological bickering when they could be finding commonalities and fixing some problems.
Also, I’ve noticed some books smell like formaldehyde. It’s kind of weird, putting it in something someone is going to have their face close to for a considerable amount of time, but maybe it helps preserve paper. Or those particular books were made by printers who haven’t yet improved their practices.