Don't Feed The Trolls

Source: Thankyou Wikipedia

Thankfully, I have never (yet!) myself fallen victim to those most heinous cowards; the Internet Trolls, but I know of several people who have and heard about many unpleasant things that have been said and done to both my friends and total strangers. Tonight I followed such an incident on (where else) Facebook-one of those groups that are specifically set up to invoke rage in people. You know the ones- usually being very callous and heartless about a subject that many people will find inflammatory or hurtful such as (genuine example from the pit of the Facebook Trolls) "Cancer is funny coz people die, LOLS." The particular group tonight, much as I hate to promote them, was called "I Hate Teen Moms" and was basically doing a good job of what trolls do best-upsetting a group of people for fun by calling them all "immoral" and "a burden to society" as well as being "illiterate". Now don't get me wrong, everyone is entitled to have their own opinions* on a particular subject matter (and heaven knows I have been far too judgemental myself from time to time) but this group was specifically set up to troll-to cause offence just to get a reaction. When one young mum posted on their wall to say that she was finishing university that year and had completed GCSEs and A-Levels after giving birth at 16, she was leapt upon by the members of the group who began attacking her (all virtually, of course) in all sorts of disgusting ways-saying that she was "not mentally equipped to have a child at that age", that "95% of teen mothers are moronic and [she] was one of them", and that she was a "dumbf__k who couldn't keep her legs closed"** and on and on and on with this bile, all aimed at her because she tried standing up for herself against them. In the description of the group, it said that it was made for "satire and dark humour" but I could find neither in their personal attacks against her (and others-this was only reading just one comment thread of several!). I know that most people agree that you shouldn't 'feed the trolls' by giving them the reaction that they are aiming for, but when someone/the things they believe in are being assaulted then you can understand why they would try and fight their corner against them.
And the sad thing is is that this is happening in every crevice of the internet-anything that someone holds dear to them whether it be taste in music or sexuality, the way you dress or a disability, hair colour or a life style choice or horrible diseases that rob us of those we love and everything else you can think of. For every group created somewhere like Facebook to offer support, solidarity, friendship or a great chill out place for soft-cheese lovers there's at least one group of people going out of their way to (pardon my language) shit all over it just for kicks.
When did this become an accepted part of society? When did it become OK to just hurl abuse at people just to try and get a rise out of them. Since when did owning a laptop and an internet connection give someone the right to be a total dick to everyone they virtually encounter? I just can't imagine something like this happening outside of the virtual world where it's possible to be anonymous and hide behind a clever-dick screen name and offensive avatar. Outside of cases of prejudice-related violence and abuse, (which you will have to pardon me for not going into detail over today-another deplorable avenue of humanity for another blog post.) most of the judgements people make about people every day live in their heads and aren't used to bait people into a fury in the name of "satire and dark humour". Whether it's born from boredom, or cowardice or genuine malice, it sickens me sometimes to realise the lengths that people will go to just to upset other people. And whilst 90% of the time I will do what I always do, refuse to get inflamed by these groups and just click on the 'Report' button and wait for the group to be shut down***, sometimes you have to let it get to you,

Source: The Good Doctor
(Image created by me)

sometimes you have to notice how horrible human beings can be to each other in the name of a joke, and hang your head for the future of our species.

Source: Know Your Meme

Trolls, Cyber-Bullies, Flamers, Internet Dickheads, just fuck off and grow up will you? The world would be a much nicer place without you in it.

-Jenni-

NB: I'm sure Facebook could do more than it does in stopping these troll groups from reaching as many people as they do-something similar to the Twitter-bots (who search for specific terms in tweets) could monitor groups with 'I hate' in the title for inflammatory content. If a group gets reported and shut down, the person who made the group should be banned from making any more groups or pages for a while. OR SOMETHING. I don't know. There must be more that can be done to make these hideous people take their poison to some other corner of the internet where no-one will find them, surely? Hopefully some day.


*The difference, I think, comes in how you express that opinion. A lively discussion between two parties that disagree is fine, but attacking every aspect of someone's personality for a belief they hold or the way they live their lives or whatever it is is just callous and pretty disgusting, especially when it's all for your own "fun".
**Spelling and grammar corrected here.
***Sadly usually to be replaced by several more on the same topic angrily swearing about the "frigid bitches who can't take a f__king joke" etc etc