Internet trolls are also real-life trolls
Why do some people find so much pleasure in harassing others online? A new study attempts to shed light on the behaviour of internet trollsMy brother and I have a childhood history of internet trolling under our belts. Innocent enough, yes – but disruptive nonetheless. From the same room at our parents’ house, we’d play Yahoo! Graffiti (the internet’s version of Pictionary). The word was “dinosaur” and it was his turn to draw. He’d illustrate a beautifully elaborate rainbow. All the while, players would be guessing “rainbow,” “RAINBOW,” “RAINBOW!!!” and wonder why they weren’t scoring points. I’d wait until five seconds were left on the clock and finally, calmly, contribute “dinosaur”. We’ve been banned from Yahoo! Gamerooms until 2016. (With any luck, I’ll have my PhD by then and show Yahoo! that I’m a changed woman.)
A “troll”, in internet slang, is someone who deliberately upsets others by starting arguments or posting unnecessarily inflammatory messages on blogs, chatrooms, or forums. In recent years, it’s gotten so bad that YouTube needed to develop a way for users to moderate their video’s comments section, and Popular Science shut down its comments section entirely. Indeed, for trolls, the anonymity of the internet is the perfect playground.
But a new study by Erin Buckels and colleagues at University of Manitoba in Canada wanted to figure out who, exactly, these trolls are. Using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk website, internet users (mostly male, with an average age of 29 years) answered survey questions designed to assess what’s called the “Dark Tetrad of personality”. This tetrad includes narcissism (egocentrism and preoccupation with prestige), Machiavellianism (tendency to deceive and manipulate), psychopathy (lack of empathy and inhibition), and sadism (pleasure of inflicting pain or humiliation on others).
Buckels and colleagues asked about the participants’ internet behavior, including how frequently they comment on blogs and forums. They also gauged how the subjects commented, asking whether they preferred debating, chatting, making friends, or trolling. Of the 418 participants, 59% said that they actively comment on websites. Among those, nearly a tenth admitted that their favorite activity was trolling other users
http://www.theguardian.com/science/head-quarters/2014/feb/25/internet-trolls-are-also-real-life-trolls
= new reply since forum marked as read
Some people must have really awful relationships in real life, if their discussion board is any indication.
... was also correlated with Machiavellianism and psychopathy. In fact, further statistical analysis revealed that most of the Dark Tetrad correlations with internet trolling were because of overlap with sadism."
Great article! Still, how come this doesn't surprise me one iota?
I've always suspected that trolls are the kind of individuals who, if you meet them when they're out and about, and not hiding in their room-bunker-cell, facing that gleaming rectangle of light that makes them feel invincible, are probably the world's #1 cowards.
More than likely if you go at a troll to give him a good ass-kicking, he'd probably cower in a corner, swearing up and down it wasn't him who did the trolling. If not believed, a troll would probably promise not to do it again, never ever.
Once having received a very well-deserved ass-kicking anyway, he would walk away, and when far, far enough, would take off running, yelling, "I will REPORT you!" or, even better, when reeeeally far away, "I will KILL you!" lol
Trolls are cowards par excellence, and were probably always cowards. Cowardly is their middle name - individuals with inadequate self-esteem, who cover that up by displaying a narcissistic personality, but only when locked securely in their miserable little room, and facing that magical cybernetic beam of light.
party's policies are truly hurting my employees........ 
