Today I want to reflect on the nature of trolls.
No, I do not refer myself to those mythical characters present in fantasy novels – large, brutish creatures that dwell in caves and shun daylight. I refer myself to online trolls.
These beings revel in the depths of social media. They exist because of a feature of the Internet, designed to protect people who would use the web to denounce malfeasance: Anonymity.
Thanks to the Internet, anyone can make an account with false information, jump on social media, and bombard other people’s accounts with bad reviews, negativity, insults, or worse. Not to mention fraudsters, who use the same tactics to pose as legitimate people and attempt to push their malfeasance on unsuspecting innocents to deprive them of their hard-earned resources before disappearing into thin air.
It is quite easy to fall for it, and social media are full of such false accounts. Caution is essential, or one risks becoming a victim to the crafty deceptions of these criminals.
It is easy to become prey to the outrage trolls, and even easier to be targeted by a con, because it is difficult to tell between reality and fiction. The Internet is a narrative, after all. It narrates the story that we feed into it, and exceedingly well. Much more so now with the advent of AI.
In this day and age, caution is the mot du jour. Be wary of everything, and do not fully trust everyone — unless they have earned it. And if a troll attacks, what can you do? You can block them, respond to them, or simply ignore them. That is what I choose to do: because in the universe of attention seeking, nothing douses that fire like indifference.