InsaneJournal

Current mood:

blah

Oh lord, she's thinking again

You know, I've really been wondering about something lately. That something being what, exactly, drives people to trolling (specifically online. IRL bullying makes more sense to me, since it happens in real time. And people tend to say stupid, defensive shit in real time, 'cause they don't get a chance to think it over).

It'd be easy to say "oh, trolls are just terribly lonely people trying to fill up some void in their souls with attention" or some shit like that, but really, I think that's a bit of a lie. I'm trying to think in real life (or as close to real life as Teh Interwebz get, anyway) terms, and real life doesn't tend to have convenient morals about love and villainy.

Which leads to the more cynical explanation: people are assholes. People have always been assholes, people will always be assholes, and people will publicly delight in being assholes if there are no visible repercussions to worry about. But the fact remains that not all people publicly delight in being assholes--in any IRL disaster area, you'll have the not-assholes (charitable people, "helpers", people who mind their own business) who may harbor asshole-ish feelings but don't publicly act on them...and then you'll have the assholes (looters, rapists, etc). So, even when you can get away with being an asshole IRL (since law enforcement is spread too thin with the whole disaster thing), not everyone does it. Which means that there's something motivating asshole-ish behavior (in this case trolling), even if the reason isn't the empty void of lovelessness.

Part of it has to be the anonymity. Even in a disaster area, you still might get caught. And even if you're a non-criminal asshole IRL, people will still probably know, and it'll follow you around. If you're an asshole IRL, your friends/family/coworkers will probably go "Wow, you're an asshole!" and subject you to some sort of social punishment. If you're an asshole online, your friends/family/coworkers are none the wiser. You get to indulge in any asshole-ish feelings you've been harboring without getting busted.

And harboring asshole-ish feelings like that may just be human nature. Jealousy, greed, cattiness...I don't think any of it goes away in "good" people. They just channel it into something else. But that's a rant for another day. My point is that the asshole-ish feelings, if not channeled elsewhere, could easily find a convenient (perhaps cathartic?) outlet in anonymous, interwebz trolling.

Ironically, this actually does circle back to the Saturday morning cartoon logic from earlier. Lawl, i maek gud argumentz laet at nite. While I'm not saying trolling is an attempt at H34L1NG 4 W0UND3D ♥!!!11 (blech), I do think it might draw people in the first place as a "safe" outlet for negative, bitchy feelings that society encourages people to suppress.

Now, I think expressing one's repressed "bad vibes" is probably a good thing. The issue, I think, is that trolling just encourages people to be catty to each other for, you know, the lulz. Wouldn't the trolls and the...er, troll-ees just be happier if everyone could find something that they enjoyed instead of sniping and bitching all the time? Aren't hobbies (though counting "trolling teh interwebz" as your favorite hobby strikes me as pretty pathetic. And I'm involved in fandom) supposed to be fun? Can't we all just get alooooong?