Introduction
Internet is the advance culture of this age. Under its banner, there are various sub cultures which need public attention. Internet culture is unhealthy as it cultivates the cyber bullying, trolling, spamming etc. It nurtures anti social behavior than humanistic. It has become the controller of minds and hence not perpetuating the power of interpretation rather it is taking young minds away from imagination. Add to this, it suggests, dictates and directs its users their life style from eating to sleeping in its trap of hyperlink web. The user’s mind is being deterittorialized in the process of random virtual navigation. A common man’s identity from practical being is reduced to virtual one. Therefore, in today’s world, a person is supposed to have facebook identity, instagram identity, twitter identity and many more owing to which he/she communicates to all the aforementioned identities but not real one. No doubt, in the coming times, an individual will suffer the clash of identities i.e. actual and virtual. Given to all these possibilities of our web world, many stark issues are surfacing in our eyes among which the most alarming is Online Trolling. Let’s understand its genesis of word ‘Trolling’ and its various definitions:
The words ‘troll’ and ‘trolling’ although appears similar in meaning but carry different connotations. The troll means ‘creature ‘while trolling means an action where an individual seeks pleasure from pinging non humorous comment or post to insult or abuse a community. The key difference between cyber bullying and online trolling is: former targets an individual and later targets a group/community. The concept of trolling is embedded in the practice of fishing where food is hooked on a stick and it is thrown in water to draw the fishes out i.e. trolling is equal to fishing as given by the Susan Herring, Kirk Job – Sludder, Rebecca Shackler and Sasha Barab. Further Susan Herring considers the troller as an online actor who is further compared with a mythical monster. This mythical figures waits in deception under a bridge as to scare the by passers. Krappitz and Lialina also defined it as an act of fishing in following words, “This phenomenon originates from the concept by the same name in fishing; trolls bait “newbies,” and because their groups and goals formed cultures that parallel Norse Mythology in which trolls are secretive creatures who will not help humans and stay in groups, they played up the analogy in referring to themselves as trolls”. A troller is an attention seeker who invites its audience by ringing on their door unnecessarily to provoke the hostilities as Bishop opined, “ Trolling once meant provoking others for mutual enjoyment but now means abusing others for personal enjoyment.”
Trolling: An anti social behavior
The behavior is the recognition of an individual’s overall personality. In physical surroundings around us anywhere if we find any person passing harmful comments on anybody, we boycott it as it is considered to be an anti social behavior. On the contrary the same behavior is encouraged on social sites; it is because of the groupism politics. A dichotomy kind of chain runs on virtual network for instance someone says, “Urbanization has ended up the charm of living.” under which the two kinds of thread of comments will divide i.e. one who admires urban living and the other one who cherishes village life. A huge debate is held without adding knowledge to either commentator’s head or the one whoever posted it. It is a fruitless online activity where an individual’s behavior reflect through the comments he drop which actually works like jettisoning a bomb on a particular region to end its population. But the fire once lit its ashes announce its impact in the every possible corner of the world. This irksome behavior is the sign that every poking nose is a social activist. There is a war on twitter which big fat rounds aspire to win by throwing arguments like there is a fire in forest: we witness the fire but don’t know who feed it? Hence, no connection with ground reality everyone else has its own discovered narrative. Social media is not harmful but the users are more driven by seeking pleasure on this platform according to Simon Sinek, the motivational speaker and marketing counselor, as he calls this urge as “ instant gratification”. This instant gratification is producing millennial with no patience for success and hard work. This generation is mad after this 21st century fad. The online behaviors have to be retraced to get our generation on track. A research conducted in the University of Columbia and University of Winnipeg conducted a test on the behaviors of online community which resulted in the conclusion that trolling exaggerates sadistic kind of trait and it is true as well as such communities seek pleasure from harming others.
The Burden of Projection
Numerous platforms such as Hello App, Tik Tok, Dubmash, You Tube, Simule etc somehow diverted the human attention from real self to project himself or herself. Talent needs projection but not the assets of life which you live. There are the bloggers who highlight the luxuries they earned or just project for the sake of show off. Such activities are unhealthy because our society is diverse in the matter of financial assets. Further, projection leads to depression, anxiety and negative competition spirit. The pressure of looking good onscreen, smiling for camera even if someone is not feeling good, talking smoothly and not repeating the outfit, are some of the reasons behind depression along with criticism and abuse received in the comment box. The number of likes is proportional to the level of projection. Although millennium is the most intelligent race in the field of digital technology but creativity and innovation is coming from only selective countries like India uses more Chinese Apps or Japanese one. Trolling increase the market rate of the apps.In the end I would like to say it is an urgent time for all of us to reorganize our behaviours.
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About the Author: Nasreen Iqbal is an M.A in English Literature from Mata Vaishno Devi University, Katra.