Friday, November 21st, 2008 : Editorial

Trolls – (Wikipedia) “An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the intention of provoking other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion.”

Ever since communication online has been available, so have trolls. In fact, you can translate these communication pranksters to about the same calibur as prank phone call jokesters, who find themselves witty and clever, entertaining whatever audience they have within their like-minded simpleness. Today’s news, on the other hand, shows how this seeming “harmless” (though stupid) interaction has become:

ABC News Reports: A Florida teenager who used a webcam to live-stream his suicide Wednesday was reportedly encouraged by other people on the Web site, authorities told ABCNews.com… “People were egging him on and saying things like ‘go ahead and do it, faggot,’ said Wendy Crane, an investigator at the Broward County Medical Examiner’s office… commenters wrote, “hahaha hahahahha hahahahahah ahhaha.” Wired reported that someone else wrote: “Instant Darwinism …” to which a fellow commenter wrote: “f**king a nicely put.” Others called the teen a “coward,” “faggot” and a “dick.”

Anyone who’s been on the Internet long enough knows that trolls provide some layer of entertainment, in that, it’s entertaining to know that no matter how bad your life gets at least – you’re not a troll. Even still, they tend to lean on the old adage – “It’s the Internet, it’s not serious”. Well, suicides resulting from mental abuse over the Internet sounds pretty f**king serious to me.

From what I gather, and from what I’ve seen, a troll is simply “have a sense of entitlement and superiority over others, and lack compassion, impulse control and social skills. They enjoy being cruel to others and sometimes use [trolling] as an anger management tool, the way a normally angry person would punch a pillow.” – What causes Bullying.

Childish, pathetic, brats, really. But bullying is still a serious problem.

So what to do about these bottom feeders of the Internet? Outlaw them? Come up with ways to stop them from interacting on your site? Digg and YouTube would be happier places to read comments, that’s for sure, but at the same time … they’d end up ghost towns too.

Patent Baristas had an article post recently on trolls and someone looking to stop’m: link here. Though I can’t say I agree, and would rather see a button that said “troll” right next to “spam” so people can flag them accordingly, I can see the value in filtering people.

I’d really like to see charges of assisted suicide be raised, if not to act as a conviction, than as a deterrent  to keep other clowns from forgetting that there are consequences from taking their sad little talent too far. Regardless, Biggs, Whitrick and Vedas aren’t the last you’ll see of Internet audience suicides, and as long as they’re happening, you can be rest assured trolls will be there cheering them along.