Thursday, November 17, 2011

Die Internet Troll, Die

Today I spent a lot of time dealing with a troll.





No, no. Not the creepily adorable fuzzy kind with a cute little belly ring that matches its bright shock of hair. I spent my day dealing with an ugly, mean, stalking, negative black hole of a troll... the kind that most internet boards immediately kick off. Unfortunately, this troll managed to find a board without a moderator on an international wedding website community called The Knot.

Because of the lack of moderator, the troll could not be banned from the board. Although singular posts could be deleted, nothing could be done to keep the troll permanently away. This troll not only made vicious personal attacks on members of the board, it also began looking board members up on Facebook and stealing their pictures. Then it would take those pictures and post them on the board, saying the most incredibly cruel and untrue things about the girl in the picture, mostly centered around her weight and appearance.

It made me wonder, what kind of low, miserable person not only has an entire afternoon of time on their hands to be a troll, but has the lack of humanity and compassion that she would personally attack others in a way almost guaranteed to hurt them?

This picture is what I imagine their soul looks like:




I've known many toxic people in my life, some of them who were incredibly shallow and judgmental, but I have never known anyone who would blindly attack complete strangers in such a personal and antagonistic way. Is there something socially wrong with this person? Are they that lonely and miserable, with no friends or loved ones, that they have to go out and try to mess with other people's lives in order to make themselves feel better? Or do they have a twisted sense of humor and some part of them actually thinks it's funny to wound someone else in a vulnerable place?

To me, trolls are the lowest of the low. They do more than interrupt the flow of a good conversation, the seriously crazy ones can become downright scary if they start legitimately stalking people. And the idea that anyone is getting a kick out of someone else's pain is just sickening. Part of me wants to meet a troll and ask them these questions, find out what kind of - I hesitate to call them a - person actually spends precious moments of life doing this. Obviously it's someone who has no regard for others, or for themselves, or they wouldn't be wasting the short time they have on this earth in such nasty, and ultimately meaningless, way. But the other part of me knows I wouldn't get many questions out before punching them in the face.

In the meantime... at least we have this:

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