Trolls On Social Media

TROLLS ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Lately troll has appeared to be an internet manifestation of everyday sadism. Troll refers to an internet slang, a term used to describe any internet user behaviour that is meant to intentionally anger or frustrate someone else or people who commonly lurk on message boards and post offensive material on online communities such as forums, chat rooms or blogs to get a rise out of people, though not to be confused with cyber bullying.

Having to interview a few people I noticed that a lot of students are trolls which is something I wasn’t aware of and of course for a variety of reasons for instance boredom, to impress others of a similar mind-set, having a malicious intent towards someone, the desire to start a heated argument or simply because they can and they feel good about it. 

Few university students admitted that they troll especially on Facebook pages like the UJ’s confession page and reason being they feel that people post unnecessary statuses or the dumbest, therefore they are entitled to their own opinions. Sometimes they create anonymous Facebook accounts to get back on their friends or just to do it for entertainment and also confessed that they troll celebrities or even brands and obviously they have encountered situations where they would get threats from people rather their friends who claimed to beat them up.

Though sometimes it appears to be a need for attention, a craving that will accept any kind of attention whether positive or negative as long as that person is at a centre of it but there are potentially serious consequences to being out dated as a troll like ranging from mere social stigma and job losses and there are cases where some people have been arrested for weeks just because of trolling or cases where people have been reported and their accounts were deleted for good.

Of course we could simply refuse to understand such behaviour and even avoid it but it seems better to face the problem head on so the best way to avoid trolls is keep your sense of humour, you may be able to joke them out of their misbehaving or ignore them period.  

Article by +Molly Dimpho