Don’t feed the trolls: the psychology behind online abuse and how it can be stopped
“I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.” If George Bernard Shaw were to replace the word ‘pig’ with ‘troll’, he would have captured perfectly the psychology of online trolls. The internet can resemble a pigsty at the worst of times, especially thanks to trolls who use the online space to mud-splatter their hate and abuse for their own merriment, to others’ detriment. Victims of trolling are sent to a verbal abattoir whilst these trolls roll around, spreading their vile dirt, as happy as pigs in clover.
The internet has 4.66 billion users, and it’s likely that the majority have come across – or will at some stage – trolling in some shape or form. Look no further than the YouTube, Facebook or Twitter commentariat to witness angry exchanges hurled around like sticks and stones. Words like ‘feminazi’, ‘libtard’, ‘fatty’, ‘snowflake’, ‘bitch’, ‘racist’ are favourites in the online abuser’s vernacular. But what exactly is ‘trolling’, and where did it come from?
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, to troll is to “post a deliberately erroneous or antagonistic message on a newsgroup or similar forum with the intention of eliciting a hostile or corrective response.” The word ‘troll’ first popped up on discussion groups on Usenet, an early-internet bulletin board platform, in the early ’90s. The Usenet group defined a troll as someone who would “utter a posting designed to attract predictable responses or flames.” At this point in the internet’s history, the act of ‘flaming’ meant launching a vicious or personal attack against someone else because of a disagreement. But by the mid-2000s, trolling became less of an ‘act’ and more of a ‘self’ that people identified with and embraced. In 2012, the word ‘troll’ broke through to the mainstream after a fifteen-year-old Canadian student, Amanda Todd, committed suicide after being severely cyberbullied.
Fast forward almost a decade later, and online trolling has gone from bad to worse. The tragic suicide of TV presenter Caroline Flack last year sent shockwaves throughout the online and offline community. Her death was a reminded that no one is bulletproof from trolling and that a torrent of online abuse can hurt and, in some instances, kill. Many hoped her suicide would mark a milestone in trolling and online regulation; yet due to an increased opportunity to communicate online (especially during the pandemic), there has been even more of a vacancy for antisocial behaviour.
A report by the online abuse charity Glitch found that nearly half of women and non-binary people experienced abusive comments since the pandemic started last March. Lucy Cooper downloaded TikTok in lockdown as a fun hobby to platform her cheese obsession. She now has over 20,000 followers, but this has come at a price with an escalated amount of abuse. “I started to get comments about a lisp, I didn’t even know I had,” she tells me. “One morning, I woke up to endless horrible comments from everything like ‘how many times a day do you have to shave’ to ‘she’s not a stunner to ‘she’s the type of geezer whose breath would stink.’ At first, Cooper found it amusing but she admits it can be difficult: “It’s not that deep saying my breath stinks, but when it’s constant, it can grind you down.”
So, who exactly is doing this ‘trolling’, and what is the psychology behind the act? “Trolls are organised hate actors who use online to induce amplification of their narratives. The viler, the better, ” says Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH). According to Ahmed, there are two main types of internet troll. The first targets public figures with large social media followings in the hope they respond. The second exhibit a psychological trait known as ‘negative social potency’ or, in layman’s terms, ‘causing harm to others’. “In both instances, they need a reaction. Every form of engagement with a troll is seen as a sign of success,” says Ahmed.
Interestingly, a study called “Trolls Just Want To Have Fun” by the University of Manitoba found significant correlations between the ‘Dark Tetrad’ personality traits (Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy and sadism) and trolling behaviour. Of all the personality measures, sadism showed the most robust associations with trolling. The study is a case in point that cyber-trolling appears to be an internet manifestation of schadenfreude.
The toxic trifecta of Machiavellianism, sadism and psychopathy is more than evident in the ‘style guides’ created by trolls. These online ‘playbooks’ are created for trolls as a reference for how best to torment victims. Ahmed tells me he once saw a guide for white supremacists which said that “when targeting a gay man, you should not use the word ‘faggot’ but use ‘faeces’ instead. This way, you will introduce a digest reflex in people to make them think gay people are disgusting.” Ahmed also said he found references to “troll women with rape threats and to troll men with threats to kill their family because they are the most effective means of abuse.”
The lengths these trolls will go to provoke a reaction is startling. Still, according to Ahmed, it’s only a matter of denying them a megaphone: “If their primary purpose is to induce a reaction and we take it away – remove the incentive for doing so – we can rebalance the bad with the good. Because, ultimately, there’s more of us than there are of them.” These trolls aren’t looking to ‘win’ or ‘lose’ an argument; they just want to be heard by as many people as possible. This explains why trolls predominantly target those with large public followings, such as journalists, celebrities or influencers.
Social media has a part to play here as once a victim engages with a troll, their message is inadvertently spread to a wider audience with the help of algorithms. The more engagement a post receives, the more it is likely to show on people’s feeds. The problem here is that these algorithms don’t distinguish between posts that are constructive and those that are spreading hate or misinformation. “Social media platforms have created lots of opportunities for trolling”, Ahmed explains, “The core metric is online traffic so they benefit financially from anything that boosts activity, positive or negative, it doesn’t matter to them.”
In a 2020 YouGov poll for the campaign, ‘Clean Up The Internet’, more than three-quarters of adults believe that social media companies do not do enough to curb online abuse. Four in five of these adults also think these firms should face fines if they do not act against abuse. According to Cooper, there are groups of accounts that solely comment abuse on platforms like TikTok, which is the same case for other sites like Twitter and Facebook: “Companies need to do more to recognise the abuse,” says Cooper. “They need to see there are accounts out there that purely spread hate. Online platforms need to realise this and put a stop to it.”
Whilst we wait for social media to introduce more stringent regulation over online abuse, the Centre for Countering Digital Hate released a report back in 2019 which recommends a ‘Troll counterstrategy’ for anyone who encounters online abuse. The report says: “You should immediately resist the urge to respond, block them immediately, switch off your app notifications, and do not post saying you’re being targeted; it will only invite more abuse. Once you have dealt with the initial rush of posts, you should record the message, report it and recruit help.”
Yet all hope is not lost. If social media companies were to introduce greater regulation, rewrite their algorithms and hold trolls to account via their IP addresses, change could be enacted. Sadly, trolls are no longer just terrorisers of billy goats in the land of folklore and fairy-tale; they are real, they are nasty and they pose a threat. Social media can play a part in cleaning up this toxic online discourse by bringing these trolls out from under the bridge and into the scolding light. Until this occurs, please don’t feed the trolls; they have insatiable appetites and they could just end up eating you.