FRESH news that are clicks away, video sharing, information flowing, ideas and discussions created by the second; are the blessings of the Internet. However, black holes and gates of hell exist as well ... have you read the comments section in your favorite news website or YouTube channel?
People who leave nasty comments on websites never cease to amaze me. After reading a couple of those comments, I usually lose hope in humanity!
The way these people think, analyze, and respond to the creation of others is just mesmerizing. A piece of news could turn into a war zone between different ideologies.
An opinion article could be interpreted in hundred ways where none of them even crossed the mind of the writer. An innocent video could ignite a party of curses and obscenity that are not even related to the topic of the video!
These people who roam the Internet looking for fights and trouble, hopping from a website to another to start arguments and picking on other people have earned their own designation; Internet trolls. And apparently, there is something wrong with these people!
According to a recent study conducted by Canadian psychologists “Trolls Just Want to Have Fun,” this kind of people “who spend a lot of time commenting online tend to have dark personality traits and show signs of sadism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism.”
Erin Buckles, a researcher in the University of Manitoba said, “The relationship between sadism and trolling was almost entirely due to the enjoyment they experience while trolling.”
“Everyday sadists do not have a hidden agenda; they simply want to have fun, and trolling is one way that they can have fun online,” she continued.
The study found that trolls tend to have preferable websites where they mostly practice their dark side hoppy, some news sites and gaming communities are among those. But on the top of the list comes the YouTube.
Unfortunately, the study was not covering the Arabic part of the Internet which I would say, confidently, that it is full of trolls.
In news websites, blogs, and even in Youtube, Arabic trolls have their own flavor and fingerprint; usually, it is a mix of religious and political preferences. A normal piece of news about, say, a sports event could be tailed by raging comments ideology and political arguments!
“Our view of sadism is that enjoyment of cruelty occurs in various degrees in normal, everyday people. It is not just criminals who feel sadistic pleasure, so the fact that trolls are rather sadistic was not surprising, I think most Internet users would agree with that conclusion,” said Erin Buckles.
It seems that, somehow, we bring some of our own daily struggles, our fears, our failures and misfortunate to the virtual world of the Internet.
The relative anonymity of the Internet encourages such personalities to practice their suppressed cruelty against others in a war of words in the comments section of different websites.
“The anonymity provided by the Internet may allow sadists to express their cruelty more easily online. So, at the very least, they want to be cruel to others in real life, but they may find it harder to do so,” the study concluded.
Internet trolls: There is something wrong with these people
Internet trolls: There is something wrong with these people










