Pretty fed up with this place. It's hard to say much anything without being accused of something. Unless, of course, you do it in a safe place among friends.
Anyway, not into having a discussion. I was reading about a BBC correspondent's encounters with antisemitism in Egypt when I came across this article about trolling, and thought it was newsworthy considering the state of affairs here.
It's offered for anyone that may care. It has some information that may also be worth consideration, especially if the environment here and elsewhere is subject to improvement.
Some snippets follow:
One of the difficulties is that trolling is a broad term, taking in everything from a cheeky provocation to violent threats. And why people do it continues to baffle the experts."Online people feel anonymous and disinhibited," says Prof Mark Griffiths, director of the International Gaming Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University. "They lower their emotional guard and in the heat of the moment may troll either reactively or proactively."
It is usually carried out by young adult males for amusement, boredom and revenge, he adds.
But it's not just young people. Scan any football, music or fan site and there are people of all ages taking part in the most vituperative attacks. But many of the theories that have been put forward as to why people do it don't stand up, says Tom Postnes, professor of social psychology at Groningen University in the Netherlands.After researching "flaming" - the term for trolling in the early days of the internet - he rejects the idea that people "lose it" when online. If anything they become more attuned to social convention, albeit the specific conventions of the web. Provoking people appears to be the norm in some online communities, he says.
No need to speculate why I bolded that part. The conventions and norm here is well described.
We're all capable of becoming a troll, says Jaron Lanier, a computer scientist in the US and author of You Are Not A Gadget. Lanier admits he has sometimes behaved badly online and believes the cloak of anonymity can encourage people to react in extreme ways."The temptation is there and we can get caught up in impulses. If someone reacts, it's emotional and it can be hard to get out of. We can all become trolls."
Read the rest if you have any interest. Discuss. Or don't.
P.S. The article about Egypt was pretty interesting, too. At least to me.