What is a Troll and What Does He or She Do?
The death of the Internet troll will lead to a funeral of much celebration, but so far the only major news site to ban them is The Huffington Post. But, it's a start, and the Huff is to be highly commended for taking the high road on a highway littered with evil little people we have come to call trolls.
Trolls are outragous, often unbelievably hateful and almost always wrong about what they are posting. Then why are they allowed to exist? Excellent question. Freedom of speech? Doubtful. What is so free about being allowed to name-call, lie, cheat, lie again and in some cases basically threaten other people, without any retribution except maybe the post being deleted or being banned from the web site for a few days? Nothing. There is no ground too sacred, too "off limits" for a troll. If twenty people were just gunned down, the troll will blame them for being in the wrong place and probably add a remark such as , "Oh well, 20 less on the road, 20 less in the supermarket line."
Amazingly, trolls come from all socioeconomic backgrounds and one thing they all have is common is a secret self-loathing that most people around them would never, in their wildest dreams imagine. No one spews out such unfiltered hate without saving a little of that hate for himself. Normal, good people do not visit web sites and consistently write terrible, shockingly hateful things about others.
There is another type of troll I call troll-lite. He is not so much hateful as spiteful. He gets his kicks by spreading inaccurate information about the subject at hand. If the subject is weather, he is a weather expert. If the subject is food he is a sous chef with numerous awards. In this regard a troll can actually be a danger to society, where the public visit to obtain critical, even emergency information.
To my knowledge a troll has never been held legally accountable for purposeful misinformation that may have led to injuries or deaths, but it is only a matter of time unless more web sites follow the direction of the Huffington Post, and require comments be signed off on by people with verifiable, real names.
http://voices.yahoo.com/the-death-internet-troll-12385348.html?cat=70
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