Menace of Online Trolling

Social media has allowed people to stay connected regardless of their distances. Everybody is there on social media be it our friends, family, celebrities, retail brands etc. The world has population of 7.3 billion and the Internet has 3.17 billion users. With these kinds of numbers, it is obvious that all types of users will be there.

Now comes the negative part about social media. This platform will undoubtedly be subjected to some form of social media trolling during the usage. Trolls, who create conflict on social media sites by making controversial statements with the unknown purposes, can be found in almost every corner of the web. They can create problems for people, businesses, and the general well-being of some aspects of social media. Sometimes, they become successful in creating havoc. Trolling provides an easy way of expressing personal views through a swift and free of cost medium. Before the advent of the internet, such views would get communicated through gossip and informal discussions.

Online trolls are very much like the playground bullies you would have encountered at school. These people intentionally provoke arguments and fights on social media and overall internet, often by saying the most grossly insensitive and offensive things. Most of the online trolls are perfectly normal and polite when we meet them in real life but when protected by the secrecy of the Internet, they can be incredibly aggressive. It is note-worthy that these online trolls use anonymous profiles to bully people on social media.

Sometimes, these people target specific people mainly the famous ones. Often, they make sexist, racist, political or homophobic jokes to stir up an argument. Latest target of online bullying was Zartaj Gul Wazir, the Minister of Climate Change, for her weird definition of COVID-19 that aired at state run TV channel. The online outburst may appear to be an obvious result of a blunder, however, an offensive campaign can hardly achieve anything of substance other than providing just a laughing stock. The seemingly harmless exercise of trolling uses hashtag to make it a trend. It is just the tip of the iceberg constituting the dark culture of criticizing others at social platforms operating freely beyond the grasp of cyber crime laws. It is important to recognize the deep roots of trolling and its huge consequences if we want to become a tolerant and cultured society.

There are also behavioral traits associated with trolling at an individual level. A research study in Australia titled Constructing the cyber-troll: Psychopathy, sadism, and empathy identifies three characteristics of an online bully.

• They have this cunning intellect to fabricating images, videos, dialogues and gestures in an entertaining way relatable to the general observations. As a result, they earn huge number of likes, retweets, comments and shares on social media which make them feel successful.
• They have zero empathy and show little to no emotions about the feelings of targets.
• They show an antisocial tendency of seeking pleasure by hurting others. This is a dark form of social behavior termed as ‘Sadism’ in psychology.

Trolling habits are self-delusional and misleading. In practical terms, the target might emerge stronger becoming immune to such bullying in future while the bully would only continue their pity behavior, searching for the next troll. Governments should take strict measures and launch awareness campaigns in collaboration with civil society educating masses about the uselessness of this online menace and culprits should be punished severely.

 

by: Abeer Arshad 

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