Can we talk about trolls for a minute?
And no, I don’t mean the fairy Tale trolls that live under a bridge, frankly I think they would be much easier to deal with. What I am speaking of are Internet Trolls. There are plenty of ways to describe them, but this one seems pretty accurate: “the mean, nasty individuals who use online anonymity to be cruel, spread their own brand of hate, destroy reputations and products, and generally try to upset and crush as many people and companies as they possibly can.”, or to summaries: They’re assholes.
Now you might ask yourself: “Why do these people troll online?” I think there are many reasons and they are all horrible. Some do it because they think it’s funny. Others because they just like getting a rise out of people. And some troll out of hatred. Such was the case with Milo Yiannopoulos when Twitter permanently suspended his account. Now I don’t use Twitter (the only reason being I find it extremely toxic) so I was very unaware of this until it was talked about in class. (Trigger Warning for Extreme Racism). But Yiannopoulos had some very strong opinions towards SNL and GhostBusters actress, Leslie Jones, a woman of colour. Yiannopoulos was a powerful voice and a held a highly public role in the harassment towards Jones on Twitter - the vast majority of it overwhelmingly and explicitly racist. Leslie retweeted some of the abuse she got and no person should ever have to deal with that sort of hatred and abuse. What I found very interesting is that Yiannopoulos had his Twitter suspended before, twice, but push back from his fans forced Twitter to reinstated him.
I find it baffling that there are people out there that support this raciest, misogynistic asshole. That there are people out there who saw what he did and jumped on the bandwagon. But I think this is a good example of mob mentality. Mob Mentality is a strong force which overrides logic, questioning, debate, reasoning, common sense. It describes how people can be influenced by their peers to adopt certain behaviours on a largely emotional, rather than rational, basis. When individuals are affected by mob mentality, they may make different decisions than they would have individually.
“Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups,” George Carlin.
But why do people follow mob mentality? Again, I think there are a number of reasons to this. For one, I think people can be lazy and instead of going out and doing their own research, they will blindly believe what is presented before them. After all, if a large group of people are all saying the sky is pink, they must be right, right? Another reason for Mob Mentality is that there is this sense of animosity. People believe that they cannot be held accountable for violent behaviour when they are a part of a mob. You can hold one person accountable, but not a mob of “faceless individuals”. It’s like the worse version of “I am Spartacus” ever. When people feel that their behaviour cannot be traced back to them, they are more likely to engage in more ethically questionable behaviour.
Anyone can get trolled or abused online for any number of reasons. I’ve been harassed simply because I am a female who plays video games (which I will discuss further in a later blog post). Celebrities or Public figures are notorious for being targeted online. I think female celebrities are especially preyed upon – and I think that has really come to light this year with the release of the Britney Spears documentary “Framing Britney Spears”. I think it’s no secret that the media abused Britney, a lot of people took advantage of Britney, but the worst part was that for he longest time, the public just let it happen. And we do this to many other celebrities. Twitter is a battlefield for bombarding celebrities with harassment – Leslie Jones mentioned above is just one example. Taylor Swift is another example and most recently Megan Markle has been getting extremely harassed by the press and online, to the point where she and her husband had to sit down with Oprah to tell their side. And given what happened 23 years earlier with Harry’s mother Princess Diana, you think people would understand the consequences of this bullying. But apparently not. Trolls relish in the power their words have to stir a reaction from the masses. The moment they get their reaction, in their mind, they’ve won whatever game they are playing.
I wish I can say there is a clear-cut way to deal with Trolls, but I think it varies. Some respond with anger, others humour – if the troll doesn’t get the rise out of you, they may stop. Blocking the troll is effective, or sometimes simply calling them out is enough to get them to back down, as was the case whenever I play online. But in the end, if we actually care about the hurt that they’ve cause, we have to understand that doing nothing and being complicit is not the answer. We have to care about the people they hurt, because to not do so is supporting the bullies.
You Can't Win an Argument with an Internet Troll, So What Can You Do? WeBroot.com. from https://www.webroot.com/ie/en/resources/tips-articles/you-cant-win-an-argument-with-a-troll
Aja Romano (June 2016) Milo Yiannopoulos's Twitter ban, explained. Vox.com. https://www.vox.com/2016/7/20/12226070/milo-yiannopoulus-twitter-ban-explained
Capeproject (Dec 2015) Mob mentality & Social media. Medium.com. From https://medium.com/@23mailboxx/mob-mentality-social-media-43205bc96395
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