So today...well, it's been quite fascinating. All began with a repost from the lovely Robert Llewellyn concerning the amount of misogynistic 'trolling' that happens online, and how many women are coming forward with horrific tales of abuse and intimidation from other people as a result of something they've submitted online (I've added a link to the article at the foot of this post). At the last count, it got something like 105 comments, a few of which belonged to yours truly. In terms of the sexism issue, I confess I stayed the fuck away from that one and concentrated primarily on what it is that makes people (not just men, as I'll shortly illustrate) forego their sense of self and their own values, that they might indulge in the now globally recognised pastime of 'trolling'.
For those of you unfamiliar, and yes - there WILL be some, no matter how unlikely that may sound - 'trolling' is the name given to the practice of online harassment toward another individual, as a response to something that individual has said or expressed online. It is, to all intents and purposes, bullying. But it's bullying under the ubiquitous 'invisibility cloak' that all of us can choose to wear to varying degrees whenever we appear online. We can (and often do) mask our identities behind a false name, profile picture etc. - and that level of anonymity gives a certain percentage of us the licence to provoke and antagonise others when the things they say conflict with our own viewpoints.
Trolls aren't new. They've been around since day one online, plying their nasty little trade. Many of the comments that Rob's post generated were from men - most of whom went immediately on the defensive and began (albeit subtly) condemning any kind of sexist behaviour for fear that they might be seen as ever so slightly sexist themselves. One or two dared to cite instances where they'd actually been victims - one in particular was targeted by a woman who'd spread malicious and damaging lies about him. The comments HE received in response to this were altogether more aggressive from his fellow males - the whole thing threatening at one point to become a flame war in and of itself.
The most notable post for me, however, was this one:
"I have been writing, blogging etc. forever and have never been trolled. If any trolls are tuned in bring it on. I have the ammunition to put you away for a very long time and a track record to prove it."
Which I found notable for its irresponsible and aggressive tone - the equivalent of standing up in a bar and shouting 'RIGHT! WHO FUCKING WANTS SOME THEN??'. And this came from a middle aged woman whose own blog deals with her passion for quilting. Yeah, I know. Couldn't fucking make it up, could you? She obviously needs to vent, and quilting clearly ain't doing it. Maybe she should join the NRA. Fuck, for all I know she already has.
So why do we 'troll'? Well, because we can, essentially. When we're stripped of our sense of individuality, either as part of a crowd (as demonstrated in the recent UK riots) or as part of a 'perceived' online group such as a forum, we find it easier to hide behind an adopted cloak of anonymity that absolves us of personal responsibility. In other words, we have a licence to become a twat. The act of picking on someone else with no fear of retribution gives a small but significant percentage of us a bit of a buzz, it would seem. And of course, anonymity is the great leveler. Your cyber arsenal consists of your wit, ability to formulate (or refuckulate) an argument, and the amount of naked photos of you there are. Physicality is null and void - and maybe this is where the problem lies. In the real world, the Alphas are the physically superior ones. Online, the tables are turned in favour of the geek. And let's be fucking honest, if you'd had years of pisstaking all throughout school and college (and possibly even work), you'd rip into a few meatheads online too, given half a chance.
There is, of course, another, less contentious factor to consider; The whole issue of Group Intelligence is one that contributes directly to this phenomenon, and is best explained using the diagram below:
Where the X axis denotes the number of people gathered, and the Y axis represents the combined intelligence of those same people. As we can clearly see using science and that, the more people there are in any one place (after an optimum group number of about 3), the stupider the overall group or 'hive' intelligence becomes. This is why committees are always shit, why groups without leaders always turn into clusterfucks and why the Polyphonic Spree are still trapped in a disabled toilet backstage at the O2.
JH
And here's a link to the original Guardian article. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/05/women-bloggers-hateful-trolling?INTCMP=SRCH
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