The psychology of internet trolls

Via Andrew Sullivan's The Dish here, research on Internet trolls has found that they are often Machiavellian sadists:

"The research, conducted by Erin Buckels of the University of Manitoba and two colleagues, sought to directly investigate whether people who engage in trolling are characterized by personality traits that fall in the so-called “Dark Tetrad”: Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), narcissism (egotism and self-obsession), psychopathy (the lack of remorse and empathy), and sadism (pleasure in the suffering of others). 

It is hard to underplay the results: The study found correlations, sometimes quite significant, between these traits and trolling behavior. What’s more, it also found a relationship between all Dark Tetrad traits (except for narcissism) and the overall time that an individual spent, per day, commenting on the internet."

Trolling happens offline too

The image above is of a letter sent by a troll to ESPN report Jemele Hill. Mashable wrote of the incident here:

"Even in the increasingly social media-driven age we live in, bigoted, vile and oftentimes racist trolling of athletes and celebrities isn't just restricted to Twitter. ESPN reporter Jemele Hill, who is African American, provided a wince-inducing reminder of that on Friday morning when she tweeted out a photo of a slur-riddled piece of hate mail from an ESPN Radio listener with a fondness for capital letters."

New technology always unsettles and sets fear in people. The Economist featured an article 'Social media in the 16th century: how Luther went Viral.' The same abuses, fear, hysteria and concern existed then as it does today.


Update

@brianjohnspencr indeed, I've received some choice handwritten letters, highlight included a sketch of me dangling from a hangmans noose
— Rebecca Black (@RBlackBT) February 18, 2014

Lucy Kellaway - Teaching our kids to govern their online tongue

Lucy Kellaway puts it perfect in her column for the Irish Times: We need to educate our children on how to govern their online tongue, just as we do with them offline. We often tell our kids to "think before they speak"; And so, as George Monbiot has previously suggested, we need to "think before we tweet" and teach this social norm to our kids. As Lucy said:

"Most people do not relish being nasty in person: we have all been brought up to be polite to strangers, especially if we are breaking bread with them.

By contrast, on the internet our upbringing is non-existent. No one seems to think there is anything wrong with being gratuitously horrible – so long as we cannot be seen."

And so, as Lucy has suggested, we need to make our children's internet upbringing existent.