On a lunch break recently I happened across a radio debate on the subject of Internet 'trolling'. A couple of British celebrities had elected to leave Twitter due to the abuse they routinely found aimed at their accounts by those of a trollish persuasion. A maddeningly saddening fact when one considers that social media and the Internet represent a well-spring of knowledge coupled with a real chance to share and build a sense of community (all be it a faux community).
I cannot for the life of me understand these people's motivations. If someone is not your cup of tea then don't follow them' they can get on with their lives and you can get on with yours without your lives ever having to intersect.
However, I digress, back to the radio debate in question. Somehow the producers of the show had managed to winkle a self-avowed troller out of his lair and have him interact live on air. One suspects that had this been a TV show where he had to face people in an intimate studio setting rather than on the end of a phone he would have declined. What can one say? Said troll was virtually linguistically incompetent. He was bereft of any reason for his actions and completely unable to defend them against the salvos of rationality that were probably peppering his conscience for the first time.
The awakened troll was a sad indictment of 21st Century culture and its ability to allow those with a callous and often bigoted heart have free rein with anonymity as their shield. And yet. Yet we would still all want to cling to the liberty of individualism and the right to free expression I am sure. A problem with a duality at its core.
All one can say with certainty is that if this troll was truly representative of the intellectual capacity of others then the generalist user of the net, the bloggers the tweeters, the surfers and more have absolutely nothing to fear.
As has often been said let us not go into a battle of withs with such people, it is unfair to take on an unarmed opponent.
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