What is a Troll, & How Do They Effect You?

The "trollface", first appearing in 2008, is often used to indicate trolling in contemporary internet culture. Modern usage of the word itself dates from 1980s.

Trolls are not just little creepy men who live under bridges anymore, they have now evolved into creepy little men who live in their mother's basements and have Internet access. Do they use this newfound Internet access to do productive things like buy soap or look for a job? No. They use the Internet to stroke their egos by putting other people down. They do this on sites like YouTube, Blogs and unfortunately Goodreads. The more time you spend on the Internet, the more chance there is that you will come across them. They go around putting down other people's work and ideas, in order to build themselves up. Some of them might even be emotionally disturbed and find that they need to rant incoherently about nothing at all. While these people are usually easy to spot and stay away from in everyday life, on the Internet they can be stealthier. They say everything from "You suck and so does your mom" to "This idea is completely stupid and you obviously don't know what you're talking about, so shut up". This can be extremely shocking and upsetting to the totally normal people who frequent the Internet to meet people and share ideas.

They say everything from "You suck and so does your mom" to "This idea is completely stupid and you obviously don't know what you're talking about, so shut up".

I bring these people up because I recently had one join the group I moderate on Goodreads. He just kept going around saying rude and negative things. I blocked him as soon as I could, but the damage had been done. Many of the people in the group had thought that they had said something wrong and had offended him. If you don't know these people exist, then you might think that and take their attacks personally. I know I did when I first came across them. One man made me feel so humiliated it brought me to tears. Luckily my husband runs an Internet business and has had dealings with these kinds of people all the time. He is the one that introduced me to the term "Troll" and told me not to let their comments bother me. "You don't let every weirdo who yells on the street effect you, right? So don't let these guys either. They're the same thing, just looking for attention and an ego boost by tarring others down."

 "If you let them and their comments get to you, then they win".

I also wanted to bring this up because so many of us have blogs. The bigger your blog becomes, the more chance you will have a troll leave a comment or two. Don't let it get to you. Just realize, "Hey my blog is getting so much attention that even Trolls have found me. I must be doing something right". If you let them and their comments get to you, then they win. You need to slough them off and keep going. And, whatever you do, don't engage with them as it just makes it worse. Now lets just hope this post goes viral and even I get Trolls commenting on it.