Calling All Trolls

 

   The Wannaskan Almanac welcomes comments on our posts. If you're not signed in, which is a nuisance for the casual reader, then a reader can comment anonymously. A friend will often start their comment by identifying themselves. That's great. We especially value comments that say, "Great post!"

   Most posts are supportive or add some interesting information. A few comments are longer than the post itself and I guess that's fine. Occasionally a comment is silly or irrelevant. Those get deleted. Not long after we started this blog almost eight years ago, I starred getting random comments from someone in Russia. Some of them were videos of young men getting drunk along the Volga River. Fortunately Google, who runs our blog, was able to block them. I would not count these silly commenters as trolls. A troll is deliberately trying to rile up people just for fun.   

  What could the motive be for someone to want to rile up another person? I can see that being ok in politics or war but not on Aunt Bessy's Cozy Quilts site. I remember hearing the story of a woman who did a podcast about her struggles with obesity. A troll started attacking her mercilessly in the comments section on her podcast. She found it emotionally devastating. Somehow she learned the troll's identity- something that almost never happens. She confronted him by phone. He was penitent. He had no idea how his comments had affected her. He was just a bored, lonely guy trying to get a reaction, even if it was a negative one.

   I looked to Reddit for their discussion of trolls. There's a lot of dumb stuff on Reddit, but also there's intelligent and funny stuff. Reddit captures the diversity of the real world. Reddit commenters admitted there was no simple answer to why people become trolls. Some people troll to get attention or because they're bored or because they're socially inept. A word that came up on Reddit several times to explain trolls was schadenfreude. Schadenfreude is a German word that literally means shade joy, or joy derived from another's misfortune.

   One Reddit writer said he would respond to trolls with empathy. Sometime the troll would lash out at him. Other trolls would open up about themselves. The writer concluded that trolls were people who never learned to connect to others in a healthy manner. This writer is obviously a saint. The best solution for the rest of us is to ignore and delete. Don't Feed the Trolls is the mantra.

Hug a troll today