They are the kind of guys who didn't have the muscles or the presence to bully weaklings back in school (because they were weaklings themselves), so they are paying back by bullying honest players.Originally Posted by Archangel
They are the kind of guys who didn't have the muscles or the presence to bully weaklings back in school (because they were weaklings themselves), so they are paying back by bullying honest players.
That's true for repressed teenagers or young adults who have had awful childhoods due to a low self-esteem or bullying. The anonymity also makes it easier to express one's self on the internet because there are little or no repercussions to what you do on the internet. Really, though, I can see much more honesty in people reflected on the web than in real life where faux pas and social restrictions come into play.
Regarding the anonymity aspect, there are a lot of outlets on the internet. It's hard for other communities to keep track of you because you can establish a new identity every time you go to a new community. It's very hard to do this in real life because rumours will obviously spread about you.
For example, I can easily go from here (from which I have "acted out-of-line" many times) to another anime forum and keep trolling them with a clean record because they have no records of my past history. In contrast, if I had a criminal record in real life and I moved to a new city within the country, chances are that the new city will have information about me because of the same network. This example shows that because there are almost no consequences to your activities on the internet, you are given the "go-ahead" to keep on retaining your troubling personality.
You also have to consider the victims' perspectives as well. Some things that people may read may not exactly be clear because the teaching of reading comprehension itself is not standardized in the world. Unless you know the writer's personality very well through their past posts or activities, it is difficult to detect sarcasm or trolling through their posts unless it is stated explicitly or is accompanied with font formatting (e.g., italics and emoticons). For example (not to pick on anyone here),
"Anbu Girl is probably an obese Japanese wanna-be otaku."
sounds a bit different if you add an emoticon in it
"Anbu Girl is probably an obese Japanese wanna-be okaku."
The writer of a post may also have excluded details that lets you see a post in a different perspective. It's very complex to comprehend what the person on the other side of the monitor is trying to convey to you sometimes.
For example, we are having a discussion on the most "evil" people in history. Many would definitely vouch for Adolf Hitler. However, I may come in and say something very general, say...
"Hitler wasn't too bad of a person."
that would lead many to believe that I was a "troll" or an "idiot". In fact, if I had put more detail in my post (e.g., "To play the Devil's Advocate", etc.), you could see how I justify why Hitler wasn't "too bad of a person".
"Speaking as a Devil's Advocate, Hitler wasn't too bad of a person because under Stalin's regime, an estimation of up to 10 million Ukrainians died through the Holodomor, a man-made genocide-famine by the USSR to terrorize Ukraine. Obviously, 10 million > 6 million last time I checked. Millions of Stalin's own people were also sent to the Gulags and Siberia where they died from abysmal working conditions, starvation, overcrowding and poor hygiene."
Even with this argument, there are still some people who are unable to change their ideas because there is a rooted foundation when we all started using the internet that not many things on the internet are accurate without a reputable source. Especially because many interactions with trolls are by forums/boards and gaming, it is difficult and bothersome to include references and reputable sources with their posts.
There are also others who are just unwilling to accept new ideas, so they may deem an opinion like that as "trolling" because there are some people out there who have firmly rooted ideas that cannot be shaken due to a personal history (e.g., brainwashing, propoganda, traumatic experience) which causes them to deny new messages.
The interactions of people is a very complex subject, in my opinion. Many concepts of linguistics and a lot of other factor a lot into how one may be judged as "trolling" even if they supposedly were not. It's difficult to say much about the subject. Keep in mind that as sickening as it may be, some people (i.e., the trolls) generally get entertainment value out of another's expense (and usually justify something like karma due to how horribly they've been treated in the past).
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