Why trolling is stupid

This was not a popular decision with users who really dislike people with a high body mass index. She and her husband had their home address posted online along with suggestions on how to attack them. Eventually they had a police watch on their house. Moreno has blurred their house on Google maps and expunged nearly all photos of herself online. Since these people posted their real names, addresses, ages, jobs and other details for the gifting program, Moreno learned a good deal about them.

They believe that saving a community is nearly impossible once mores have been established, and that sites like Reddit are permanently lost to the trolls. When sites are overrun by trolls, they drown out the voices of women, ethnic and religious minorities, gays—anyone who might feel vulnerable. Young people in these groups assume trolling is a normal part of life online and therefore self-censor.

The same percentage consider online harassment a regular part of their jobs. Now everyone on the Internet is a public figure.

The problem is that not everyone can deal with that. Citing the role of Twitter during the Arab Spring, she says that anonymity has given voice to the oppressed, but that women and minorities are more vulnerable to attacks by the anonymous. At some point, everyone, no matter how desensitized by their online experience, is liable to get freaked out by a big enough or cruel enough threat. Still, people have vastly different levels of sensitivity.

Which are exactly the kinds of messages Em Ford, 27, was receiving en masse last year on her YouTube tutorials on how to cover pimples with makeup. This year, Ford made a documentary for the BBC called Troll Hunters in which she interviewed online abusers and victims, including a soccer referee who had rape threats posted next to photos of his young daughter on her way home from school.

Troll culture might be affecting the way nontrolls treat one another. But the opposite is likely occurring as well. As more trolling occurs, many victims are finding laws insufficient and local police untrained. But when it comes to someone harassing you online, getting the social-media companies to act can be very frustrating. One counter-trolling strategy now being employed on social media is to flood the victims of abuse with kindness. In , after Emily May co-founded Hollaback! Though everyone knows not to feed the trolls, that can be challenging to the type of people used to expressing their opinions.

Writer Lindy West has written about her abortion, hatred of rape jokes and her body image—all of which generated a flood of angry messages. My only repeat troll is Megan Koester, who has been attacking me on Twitter for a little over two years. I wanna kick your ass. Her email back agreeing to meet me was warm and funny. Though she also sent me the script of a short movie she had written see excerpt, left. I saw Koester standing outside the restaurant. She was tiny—5 ft.

She ordered a seitan sandwich, and after I asked the waiter about his life, she looked at me in horror. In fact, it is easier to detect, track and manage aggression online than offline. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic is a professor of business psychology at University College London and vice-president of research and innovation at Hogan Assessment Systems.

He is co-founder of metaprofiling. When death goes viral: mourning celebrities on social media. Kim Kardashian: why we love her and the psychology of celebrity worship. To get weekly news analysis, job alerts and event notifications direct to your inbox, sign up free for Media Network membership. Find out more here. Behind the online comments: the psychology of internet trolls. The TV historian and Cambridge professor Mary Beard has revealed that she wrote a letter of recommendation for one of her trolls.

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