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
