Behind The Mask of Trolling
Overtime the meaning of trolling has changed. Trolling use to be a way to interact with people via the internet. Gather people up and discuss a specific topic. Overtime the definition has shifted, and it has made its way into becoming something very negative. Today it has shifted to many different negative meaning one being, “verbally attacking.” This isn’t so nice, and it is. far from a gathering online for an online discussion. Now trolling is in the category of cyberbullying, cyberhate, and cyber aggression. They say trolling starts with a person’s mood. Someone who is in a negative mood is more likely to troll others. It also has it peaks late at night, and earlier in the week such as on a monday. Now why is this? I think this all has to do with someones emotions. Mondays can be seen as a rough day, and having a long day can leave you with as moody night. Both of those can lead to negatively affecting your emotions which may allow you to troll. Learning about the transition of trolling over the years and what makes someone troll are two takeaways from this week’s readings.
I myself have never been exposed to trolling, but I have seen it. A lot of it comes from fake accounts on social media. The account is managed by someone, but no identity is shown. No profile pic, no name, and no pictures. The people typically want to keep their identity as a secret as they negatively affect someone’s social media page which can affect them. If this were to ever happen to me I’d block the user. Blocking won’t allow them to see my social media page, and they won’t be able to say anything to me from that point on.
Instagram is an app that has developed ways to help prevent the use of trolling. Instagram allows you to be able to restrict accounts. So when the account that you restrict makes a comment on your post you can approve it or not. Approving it allows it to be public, and not approving it doesn’t allow it to be public. I think that this is a very good way to de-escalate a problem. I wasn’t aware of this accessibility until doing this research for this medium post. I’m glad I did so I can have a way of de-escalating a problem in the future if I have to. I provided the link below to the site where I got this Instagram information. It also includes another example to eliminate trolling on Instagram.
https://www.bark.us/blog/instagram-features-stop-cyberbullying/