noun
1. (in folklore) an ugly cave-dwelling creature depicted as either a giant or a dwarf.
Troll2
verb
- make a deliberately offensive or provocative online posting with the aim of upsetting someone or eliciting an angry response from them.
- carefully and systematically search an area for something.
- walk in a leisurely way; stroll.
- sing (something) in a happy and carefree way.
noun
1. a person who makes a deliberately offensive or provocative online posting.
2. line or bait used in trolling for fish.
At the moment, the news is reporting on the suicide of a woman (Brenda Leyland) who has been accused of trolling the McCann family. Opinions on the whole thing are very mixed.
There is a good reason for the term 'babysitting'. If children were meant to be left alone, people wouldn't have made careers out of being nannies or child-minders. But I don't think anyone needs to tell the McCanns how big a mistake it was to leave their children that night. They have to live with their decision every day. And they’re blessed that only one child was taken, when there were three potential victims in that room.
I (obviously) believe in free speech but there is a line which when crossed, can become abuse. Although the McCanns are not actually on Twitter, this person wrote 4000 tweets about them in the hope they would see it. She had a right to her opinion but the fact that she chose to give it anonymously would suggest that she knew on some level, that what she was doing was wrong.
I personally believe that anyone who goes out of their way to target someone like that is clearly unstable in some way. Who even has the time to write that many tweets?! Yes smart a*s - probably me since my entire blog probably equates to 4 million tweets but this isn't about me.
Her reaction to being 'outed' was the sad decision to take her life. A sane person wouldn't jump to such an extreme solution. The journalist who exposed her was just doing his job. And if you insist on sharing your opinion so publicly then I don't see why you should be able to stay anonymous. But I do believe that some protection should have been offered to this woman, maybe in the form of counselling. She was left exposed to abuse. And whilst she was doing this to another individual, it shouldn't mean that someone can do it to her.
There’s something about being behind a computer screen that makes some people mean. That woman had no problem tweeting 4000 times but I am sure if she met the McCanns, she wouldn’t have had half as much to say. Or maybe she would have seen the pain that they must feel, and wouldn’t have been able to bring herself to add to it. Maybe she needed the computer screen in front of her to stop her from seeing the couple as real people.
A few years ago, Charlie Brooker wrote a TV series called Black Mirror that really needs to be seen if you haven’t already (http://www.channel4.com/programmes/black-mirror/4od). The black mirror is meant to represent the screen of our phone, computer and/or tablet. Each episode was a different way in which technology could change the world as we know it. Whilst some portrayals were extreme, you only have to read stories like this one to realise that we’re not that far off. The internet makes it so easy to target people and technology makes it easier for us to access the internet.
I’m not a hippie, I’ll be the first to say that my life would be incredibly dull without the internet. So would yours, as you wouldn’t be able to read my blogs. But as wonderful as the inet can be, it does have a very dangerous side to it.
When I was at university, my home was broken into and my room was trashed. In addition, my brand new uninsured laptop (of less than two weeks) was stolen. I remember feeling violated at the time. The person had rifled through my underwear drawer and messed up my bed. It creeped me out no end. I don’t think I even slept in that room that night. This was nothing in comparison to how it would feel if someone took my most intimate moments and shared them with the world. Being famous doesn’t mean someone deserves that. Some of the women whose photos were hacked have been in long term loving marriages, and sent photos to keep their marriages alive. Why they are being punished for this is beyond me. Sometimes I look so good that I want to memorialise the moment in photo. Does that mean that everyone is entitled to see it? Whilst I agree that it would be cruel to keep my beauty from the world, it is my body and face and should be my choice who gets to see it.
I remember having a conversation with a friend who said she didn’t understand how someone could be cyber bullied, saying that they should just turn their device off. But why should they have to? How isolating would life feel if you couldn’t check any social media sites or apps for fear of receiving a hateful message? There are apps like Whatsapp that automatically makes you visible to anyone on your contact list. So anyone who has your number and has the app would be able to contact you if they want to. When Facebook introduced the timeline last year, it made everything on your page public, even if you had the most restricted privacy settings. You had to trawl through all your posts and photos to change it back to private, and in the time it took to realise this had happened, however many people had access to your information. There’s a whole TV show called Catfish about people who use photos of others to create fake online profiles. It is scarily easy to get hold of someone’s information. The website www.192.com allows you to find out the town almost anyone lives in, and for a fee, you could get the full address. Thanks to Google, people can go onto maps and probably see your front door.
Instead of blaming people for allowing themselves to become a victim, something should be done about the perpetrators. Hurt people hurt people. There is clearly a reason why someone bullies another, whether its jealousy, insecurity or just boredom. It’s not enough to just expose the trolls, because there will be another person ready to troll them, and the cycle continues.
If I don’t like someone, I simply just don’t give them the time of day. I behave as if that person doesn’t exist rather than hunting them down just to let them know just how much I dislike them. Chances are, if I just leave them alone, I won’t get angry enough to need to abuse them anyway.
The problem with the black mirror is that it’s rarely black due to over activity so we never really have to look at our reflection. You can’t even see yourself when your phone is illuminated by the different apps in front of your eyes. Maybe if we looked at ourselves as we did things, the outcome would be much different. (I probably wouldn't get anything done as I would be transfixed by the vision of beauty before me).