Internet Trolling: The Beast

There's hardly anyone who is not using the internet these days. It's without doubt a great invention. But unfortunately, no one so far has been able to develop an anti-troll device that will help to make it a more civilized place. If you belong to this generation, you might have come across this thing called the Internet troll. If you consider yourself to be pretty active on social media or other types of platforms, you may have experienced what many savvy internet users call “being trolled.” A troll is nothing but one who posts a deliberately provocative message to a newsgroup or message board with the intention of causing maximum disruption and argument.

What is the actual meaning of trolling online? There are a bunch of definitions of the term “trolling,” but the first one that seems to define it as simply and accurately is that the one who posts irritant, irrelevant messages in online platforms with the only intent to provoke readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting on-topic discussion. They hide behind their computer screens, and go on causing trouble on the internet.

You can find trolls around almost every social media site. Below are few specific places that are well known to attract trolls.

YouTube video comments: If you use Youtube, you will definitely come across some of the worst comments of all time. That is why it is called "the trailer park of the internet." The more views and comments a video has, the more troll comments it’ll probably have as well.

Blog comments: There are some popular blogs that have comments enabled. You can go and find trolls cursing, name-calling and just causing trouble. For most often this is particularly common for blogs that cover controversial topics.

Email: There are few who actively take the time and energy to write up horrible email messages in response to people they disagree with. Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, Tumblr or practically any social networking site is filled up with trolls. Instagram is another one because it's a very public platform, and you will surely come across many celebrities' posts filled up with trolling comments.

So, what you should do to avoid such trolls are-
Firstly, keep your remarks to an absolute minimum. State your facts and let the ball be in your court. Secondly, don’t let them flatter to deceive. There is a high chance that a troll brings oneself into favour with someone by trying to please them before he starts his attack. This will be difficult, since there are some who sugar coats their comment. The next one can do to avoid troll is that one can use blacklists and whitelists to separate the bad from the good. IP addresses can be tracked and persistent attacks from an IP or a range of IPs can be effectively blocked.

So, these are some of the ideas to avoid the kinds of internet trolling. But it should be noted that trolling, when done correctly, without abusing is not harmful.

Understanding that who is talking to you, and the motive behind, is the key.