 |
||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| Trollumination by Tansin A. Darcos 04/13/2018, 9:32pm PDT | ||||
 |
 |
|||
| Features of the Internet and associated technologies have the potential to undermine the counterbalancing traits of even healthy personalities and pose the risk of escalating pathological features. Often this occurs in anonymous encounters with facilitating individuals or groups who mutually reinforce and validate extreme or pathological viewpoints and embolden inappropriate behavior.
Online survey studies of the personality features of Internet trolls conducted by a group of Canadian scholars concluded that trolls are “prototypical everyday sadists.” The researchers explored the links between trolling and what psy chologists call the “dark tetrad” of personality traits—narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism—and found that the tetrad was highest among survey respondents who said that trolling was their favorite online activity. Illustrative of the attitudes the researchers were studying was inclusion in their Likert scale surveys of items such as "The more beautiful and pure a thing is, the more satisfying it is to corrupt," and "Hurting people is exciting." The online jargon for producing and enjoying the distress of others is "lulz." The phenomenon of cruelty for sport on the Internet now has its own etymology (with recognized usages such as “trolling” and “lulz”). Trolling is highly performative behavior: beyond seizing the attention and provoking the responses of the targeted persons, trolls also pursue psychological reward by gaining the attention of admiring audiences who share their taste for "lulz." Keeping bad company, online and anonymous, egged on by like-minded others look - ing for entertainment, can stimulate a vulnerable personality toward many harmful and destructive actions, including leaking and espionage. For example, a person with psychopathic personality features might engage in espionage or leaking simply for the thrill of breaking rules and creating chaos; like trolls, psychopaths "do it for the lulz." For them, the Web is a playground and its darker elements a confirmation of their view of reality: exciting, Darwinian, and pitiless—- a world populated by either predator or prey. Their secret enjoyment of the contrast between the day-to-day, "real life" humdrum in their offices, surrounded by unwitting, duped colleagues, and their charismatic, online persona, uninhibited and free and complete with applauding admirers, provides ample reward. There is also plenty of material and people online to feed the vengeful, spiteful characteristics that are common to both psychopathy and narcissism. People with narcissistic personality features can find ample fuel online for their grandiose fantasies and can experience on the Internet the expansive, protean sense of power and superiority that characterizes them, validating their desire to get revenge on organizations or authorities they believe insufficiently appreciated them or otherwise wronged them. Immature personalities, defined by difficulties separating the fictions and dreams of their imaginations from hard, factual reality, find plenty of scope on the Internet for fantasy-driven activity that simply bypasses any consideration of consequence in real life ("IRL" in Web parlance). The immature personality is more easily seduced into action by the seeming unreality of behavior in the cyber realm, actions that can seem to disappear with the click of a mouse or the swipe of a fingertip. An enduring paradox of the Internet is that while it is distinctly real (it exists in material reality), it is also distinctly different—and, to some, quite separate—from concrete reality. This is dangerous ground for those who do not readily distinguish be tween fact and fiction, between what resides in their imaginations, their desires and hopes, and what resides in concrete, material reality or IRL. Psychopathy, narcissism, and immaturity all have in common the characteristic of grandiosity. A well-known adage of the digital age is: "On the Internet, everyone knows you are a dog." It could also be said that: "On the Internet everyone thinks you are a hero, or a villain." Our technology now makes it possible for a person to develop and express multiple selves in cyberspace. This is a context of human interaction and action that can feed and reward grandiose self-perceptions. Furthermore, the Internet, and the technology and devices that give access to it, are ostensibly under the control of the anonymous user. If the anonymous user feels unrewarded online, he or she can back out and re-enter in a different persona, not something that is possible—at least not to the same degree—IRL. A user can also set aside, discard, or destroy poorly functioning or frustrating devices, again, something difficult to do with people |
||||
 |
 |
|||
|
Trollumination by 04/13/2018, 9:32pm PDT  Is he back? Can this be? NT by 04/13/2018, 9:45pm PDT can someone give me the short version pls NT by 04/20/2018, 1:46pm PDT Counterfeit Posting by 04/21/2018, 9:22pm PDT Please go back to the seals. It was the only way we knew for sure. NT by 04/21/2018, 11:21pm PDT Short Version: Anonymity on Internet turns nice people to sociopaths NT by 04/21/2018, 9:33pm PDT |
