Connecting to the Internet, opening my browser. Just going to check if anybody left me any messages, no? Ok. Did anyone comment on my witty motivational status, wait, what is this? Someone called me a loser and ignorant. What the…Ah yes, the most evil spawns that the Internet spew out. Trolls.
When you hear the word ‘troll’, the first thing that pops into mind is not a huge ugly creature out of some fantasy world, no, it is more like a fat kid who has never seen daylight and sits in front of the computer day in day out. These people have nothing better to do than to surf the finely sewed web of pages and pages of information, and yet they still manage to find that one person who acts normal, and the trolls just sit around waiting for that person to mess up, be it a misspell, be it something that is the complete opposite of troll belief, bam! They are onto him like children are onto ice-cream.
Stop! Time to hammer some questions. If you think that the average troll is some fat little kid, forever alone, sitting in the dark, enjoying the misery and misfortune and feeding off discord and mayhem, you are gravely, utterly, completely, quite outright mistaken! A troll is not someone like that, a troll is someone like everyone. Although, it has to be pointed out that for someone to become a troll that someone needs to possess at least some kind of basic knowledge on how to use the Internet and how to quickly separate facts and especially to have the ability to use higher linguistic functions such as sarcasm.
But, hold your horses, a troll is a bully then, you think. Well certainly that kind of thinking is valid, however, considering that anyone is able to look up information and use a spellchecker, and yet people still make mistakes that would make a person with obsessive compulsive disorder climb walls in agony, it is understandable why trolls do what they do best, troll. Now, this is not justifiable by any means, nor is it hurting anyone really, but nevertheless never forget, do not feed the trolls, ever. Once started, they are quite hard to get rid of. The only way out is to counter-troll them.
A piece of advice, never get involved with a troll, unless you plan on becoming one, do not worry the transformation is almost instantaneous and it does not hurt. The best thing you can do is ignore them, they will eventually get bored soon enough, about three to four minutes will suffice. As soon as they leave they rarely do return to before visited places. And now that everything is safe again, carry on.
By Dejan Vicai
