Who is a troll?
Merriam-Webster defines a troll to be “a person who intentionally antagonises others online by posting inflammatory, irrelevant, or offensive comments”.
Modern society of the online variety has really discovered its own little e-devil. The troll is a persona that plants a thought or an idea that is noisy, disruptive and negative. Something that can get people talking and debating. And most of the time, it is an anonymous entity, created for the purpose at hand.
The troll is therefore part of common modern lingo and living today.
Our political parties, businesses and indeed anyone with an agenda has used it to their advantage. While in the beginning the troll was an individual, today, the troll is an institution as well. And some say there are troll factories amidst us. Normal-looking folks, now working from home, dishing out hate, angst and disruptive comments by the minute. And the troll is here to stay.
Life in the fast lane of the internet and its communication avatars makes for an interesting watch. In the beginning, there is communication. Every individual with access to the internet and its
many tools and apps is suddenly empowered. Empowered to post a thought, post a comment. Thoughts thus posted attract repartees, very civil ones in the beginning.
As comment leads to counter-comment, the tone, tenor and e-decibel of the discussion heats up. One wrong word gets twenty back and all civility vanishes. Trolls therefore have the ability to hit hard and fast. They are forever awake and alive to every comment. And they are fast fingers on their phones and digital devices. The fastest we have seen thus far.
Trolls love the controversy for sure. Everyone in this business has understood that the negative spreads faster than the positive. Hate sells more than love. Lies spread faster than the truth. It is therefore an art, a science and indeed a new philosophy that decides to look at the negative in everything that is put out there. The otherwise casual comment by a film star, the innocuous but daring dress someone wore to a party, that rather hard-hitting panelist on a TV news debate and literally everything else one can grab to
create a controversy out of even a non-controversy is good fodder for the troll.
They are therefore creatures of our own creation. The quiet and sensible individual on Twitter became the noisy one in no time. Two such people got into a verbal fight in 280 characters or Unicode glyphs. The debate remained largely decent. And then came the intemperate word. One word got another. The decibel of debate got noisier. Every other persona who watched it unfold had a view. Some pitched in. The divisions began. One simple start with one innocent and simple comment snowballed into creating noisy and strong divisions within Twitter society.
The trolls jumped in and nitpicked the issue further, adding every dimension of culture, society, religion, language and more. Anything that could divide was picked as a valuable troll-tool. Society cleaved. Online action of the verbal kind led to offline action of the physical kind. And that became the worry.
Does all this sound familiar? It has happened in the past, is happening today and will continue to happen in the future. The truth is, digital media has made people-adjacencies closer than ever.
Think. As 420 million people are hooked onto WhatsApp, the distance between one another is next to nothing. You are only as distant as one WhatsApp message on my phone is. In the old days, people lived in cities and villages. All distanced from one another by the physical ability to reach out. Traditional media tried to bridge that gap with television in particular. Today, digital media stitches everyone closer than ever before. Let’s remember that the biggest fights happen between neighbours.
Look at the long list of conflict countries in the hotspots of the world and this is surely apparent. Neighbours have quarrels with one another due to their physical adjacencies. For example, it is easy for North Korea to trample over the toes of South Korea. Today, the digital world has brought these adjacencies closer than ever. Digital life has made everyone neighbours. Everyone is adjacent to everyone. Everyone is a tweet away, a Facebook post away and indeed, a WhatsApp message away. Geography is history. The vast swathes of empty land that divided communities are no longer there virtually. And when everyone is everyone’s neighbour, every issue is a contentious issue. The troll thrives in such a proximus environment.
The troll loves the overheated moment and the overheated sentiment. He, in many ways, is the catalyst who adds to it. In many cases, the troll is that vocal minority that makes the silent majority of real people irrelevant in the debate. And that is the tragedy of it all. The debate on the troll will continue into the future. Even as it does, I notice a trend that is emerging. In a bid to battle the “bad troll”, the “good troll” is being invented. The angel and the devil, really. Political entities, businesses and even brands will invest in the “good troll”.
Imagine the situation when a brand is about to launch a new advertising campaign. An army of good trolls will be briefed to do the positive spin covering every angle that may come up for debate. And even as the bad troll gets into action, the good troll would have done what was meant to be done as pre-emptive work.
The analogy is a simple one. In the world of software we have viruses created to destroy and threaten. And every virus does need a cleaner and an anti-virus. The business of the anti-virus makers began because of the virus. The business of the “good troll” therefore begins on the basis of the business of the “bad troll”. If you can’t beat them, join them. Troll versus troll, then!
Harish Bijoor
Brand Guru & Founder, Harish Bijoor Consults (harishbijoor@hotmail.com)