How Trolls Are Ruining the Internet

[Grendel]

FYI.

http://time.com/4457110/internet-trolls/

[Tunnelcat]

Precisely why I'm not on Facebook or Twitter, nor do I have a cell phone. I'm not a masochist at heart and a lot of social interaction has turned into sadistic trolling.

[callmeslick]

by and large, one can manage one's account and avoid that crap. By and large, I may be involved in some keen debates, but no one in my circle is much for that sort of alienating anger. What was an eye opener came a few weeks ago. Was sitting around waiting to pick up daughter from her job and go school shopping for grandkids. I figured I'd kill time and finally set up FB messenger on my phone. Wow!! All these messages that had been sent to me that I'd never seen! Some from what were apparently 12 year olds with foul language skills. Amazing, and these people wouldn't no more say such things in person than anything.

[Ferno]

I've filtered out almost all the egregious, the batshit insane, the hatred on my facebook feed. It took a while, and a bit sneaks in occasionally.

The internet, especially the more popular areas are a bit like the world. It's a mean, nasty, gritty place and if you let it, it will beat you down and keep you down. The key in this is not to point fingers and blame this troll or that troll because you're not where you want to be. No one got anywhere because they let someone else dictate to them who they are supposed to be. No one got anywhere because they could hit harder than the trolls. They got somewhere because they could take the hits from the trolls and keep moving forward. They got somewhere because they showed the trolls they can't be taken down by them. And those who are saying the trolls are ruining the internet are giving the trolls power.

The alt-right’s favorite insult is to call men who don’t hate feminism “cucks,” as in “cuckold.”

Personal anecdote here; I got a couple of these in my Youtube feed one day, where I was talking about feminism... or some other hot-button issue like that. I can't remember what I said in response to this, but it was enough to send them scurrying away. Something about jealousy maybe.

[Tunnelcat]

You know what's wrong with people on the Internet? The lack of basic humanity and judgement. People can easily become robot trolls because of the Internet's anonymity and lack of face to face contact. It's social interaction being mechanized and dehumanized. It's also why we fear making ourselves publicly known, for our own protection against those same said trolls. It's a vicious circle. When it comes to judgment, the Internet causes us to act the same as if we drank alcohol. Take a couple of drinks and judgment usually flies out the window. Go online, same result. Do things and say things you'd only do when you're thoroughly drunk.

Cars are the other example of something that causes technological anonymity. Get in a car, it becomes this metal box that somehow turns us from caring human beings into crazy raving idiots and jerks, behaviors we wouldn't normally do in our own living rooms (unless we're drunk of course). And along those lines, that's what's basically wrong with the current concept of self-driving cars. The builders and programmers can put in cameras and sensors along with all sorts of code that makes that car stay within it's lane, makes it follow a route, makes it follow the proper speed limits and makes it stop when it's necessary to stop. But the programmers haven't yet figured out how to program in judgement, something that's vital in order to correctly respond to those unexpected invents that occur which happen to be outside the programmer's mental box when the car's intelligence was originally created. Sure, humans sometimes lack judgment, but we do have it within in our brain's programming. Computers however, will always lack judgement in their current form. Maybe in the future.....

[Krom]

I could have sworn I read an article just like this one only it was 15 years ago.

[Grendel]

I could have sworn I read an article just like this one only it was 15 years ago.

Yep, because trolling has been around since the dawn of mankind. Doesn't hurt to point out the latest and greatest on the troll front once in a while Blast from the past.

[Top Gun]

Penny Arcade got it exactly right more than a decade ago.

[Tunnelcat]

Far more succinct, and colorful, than the way I said it.