Trolling...? No, it could be serious.

So the term 'Trolling' has been thrown around lately. 

A troll, according to the more traditional meaning would refer to a monster of some sort who lives or sleeps under a bridge.

This thing perhaps?

But who are we kidding? This is the INTERNET where nothing is about the traditional.

It's about the new age, an age of innovation, of constant change and of constant advances in how we as human beings communicate. So, what exactly has this medium of the internet created among social interaction for us as individuals?

For many, it has created a new medium for where anyone is able to communicate with anyone else, provided they want to. What does this mean?

It means that for those who have trouble communicating with others in real life, social interaction does not end there. It is no longer the be all, end all. The internet has created a new community, where the shy, the fat, the asian, the white, anyone, can interact with anyone else.

Excuse my stereotyping there...but let's be honest society can often hinge on stereotypes like nothing else.

Yet, what is seemingly a positive step for us socially which the internet provides can in many ways be the exact opposite...

And what do i mean by this? Well lets get back to the topic of trolls shall we...

So i log into my facebook and i post a status update. 1 minute later, i receive a notification of a comment from an individual i barely know, and was oblivious to the fact that he existed on my friends list. There's no question that his voicing of his opinion was deemed offensive towards me, by me, at the time, and so i retorted in the way i know best. An offensive post of my own. For the record, i simply stated my plans for the day and he deemed it reasonable to talk about how "noone cares you idiot." So, without knowing it, i was dragged into the naivety of my own inability to control my emotions, leading to an open argument infront of an open community in Facebook, where everyone on my own friends list and possibly his could see what in hindsight was a pointless conflict of words. And in the end...there was simply nothing to it. He was just "trolling." 

But where does such a distinction end? It might be useful to note that the definition of a 'troll' on the internet refers to someone who puts inflammatory remarks to specifically incite some sort of adverse reaction or simply for their own enjoyment. But it is equally useful to note that we live in a world full of people and the internet has simply created a greater scope of a medium for us to interact with each other upon. This is in a lot of ways a great thing. Contacting family and friends overseas is easier. Business meetings done internationally without delay. Important news spread in an instant. Never before could society communicate with each other on such an broad basis so easily and instaneously.  

Yet, it is also a veil. A veil where unidentifiable aliases can hide an individual's true persons to the people they communicate to on the internet and ultimately creates extreme uncertainty sometimes about just who we are talking to and what we are talking about. So the point is, has the internet in fact created a more dangerous medium of communication? In many ways, the internet does define how we as individuals act as it is probably the most influential form of media to which this world looks to, on an international basis anyway.



There's no doubting it...it's a dangerous place to put your trust in...and interact with others

I mean...just look at the privacy issues to which social networking sites have...

FACEBOOK KILLER

Yeah exactly, pretty chilling eh? And the craziest thing is that the internet cannot be controlled. The facebook killer exploited this innocent woman's personal interests. In fact, it was probably there for all to see...the seemingly innocent wall posts, the pictures, the links that were posted. Even the initial friend acceptance. Yet noone suspected a thing.

The simple fact of the matter is that the internet is easy to manipulate, on an individual basis and as a collective.

It can also be dangerous...

Not that the trolls on reddit.com would know though.