Neil Oliver - "The twitter block function is a truly liberating act. It's like having a light sabre."

@NEIL_OLIVER_: @almurray I've said it before and I'll say it again, the twitter block function is a truly liberating act. It's like having a light sabre.

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."

How to deal with Twitter trolls

The trick with trolls is simple. Don't engage. Thomas Jefferson famously said:

"Nothing gives one person so much advantage over another as to remain always cool and unruffled under all circumstances."

A response is exactly what they want. It means their cruel enterprise has succeeded. Silence and non-response is failure for them. For as Nick Cohen said in The Spectator:

"I’ve noticed on Twitter that when someone responds to mad or sexist abuse, rather than ignoring the abuser or blocking him, there is a perceptible moment of delight when the ranter realises that – at last – he has hit his target and made her notice his existence."

Or, if you must, as we looked at here, you can name and shame those online abusers. A technique suggested and practiced by Mary Beard. She said:

"It is a tough call. I have increasingly opted for name and shame."

In the video above and here Duncan James also spoke about "naming and shaming" Twitter trolls. If the menace and abuse escalates you should contact a family member and the police.

DISCLAIMER: None of the above represents legal advice.

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.