Why People Are Assholes On The Internet
By: Anthony Boyd
Tags: Self Growth, Personal Development, Practical Psychology, Psychology, Sociology

Why People Are Assholes On The Internet

Photo: Yaopey Yong Via Unsplash

Why do people troll so much on the internet?

You see those people that walk happily around your neighborhood, walking their dogs, taking a jog, minding their business? There’s the likelihood that they turn into internet trolls by nightfall.

People who normally get on great with everyone in real life seemingly transform into monsters the instant they log into their social media profiles.

Here’s 6 reasons why

Anonymity

These internet trolls have free reign, or so they believe, to say or do whatever they feel because they are hiding behind a mask.

When they log into their anonymous profiles with 2 followers, they no longer identify with the image they strain to hold up in real life.

These avatars they log into are not linked to their real world identity and so they feel they have nothing to lose by getting up on social media and spewing vitriol.

Furthermore, it is the perfect time for their shadow self to express itself.

Deindividuation or “Sports Muscles”

Trolls are a part of an imaginary group of “like” minded individuals. They view a few tweets of people who share one or two view points and suddenly they feel empowered by a pseudo group dynamic.

They fall right into the trap of deindividuation.

deindividuation n. The situation where antinormative behaviour is released in groups in which individuals are not seen or paid attention to as individuals; immersion in a group to the point at which the individual ceases to be seen as such.

In other words, people merge into an amorphous blob of ideology. They no longer are “themselves” within this group dynamic and therefore no longer feel as if they are tied to any individual identity that had to answer for their anti-normative musings on the internet.

We see this a lot when people talk about their favorite sports team or their political ideology. They start behaving as part of the group they identify with rather than their seemingly usual, civil self offline.

Gary Vaynerchuk often jokes about the fact that he has “sports muscles.” He makes it a point that he is the nicest person when he’s not at a Jets game but when he’s in the stands and someone talks smack about his team, he’s a whole different person.

Assumed Obscurity

This is similar to deindividuation in the sense that these people think that the screen and group they are looking through and merging with, respectively, is a one way mirror.

In other words it’s simply a window they are looking through. WE CAN SEE YOU.

Many of these trolls forget there are a myriad of ways of identifying who’s behind these accounts. Some also show their true colors when certain topics are raised.

They forget they are logged into a personal profile and are easily identified by personal pictures or log into an anonymous account where their information is not readily secure.

Some even like to hide behind jest, thinking that it’s alright to be assholes just as long as it’s in “good fun.”

The Trap Of The Spiral Of Silence Theory

Online trolls fall into the trap of The Spiral Of Silence Theory when they assume that their opinions are apart of a majority ideology on the internet.

In other words, they don’t fear repercussions because they make the assumption that “everyone thinks like this, right?” Wrong.

These people usually grew up in sheltered environments where they were given only a small sample size of world views.

They didn’t travel enough to meet many different people, only hung around people in their in-group and just lack overall self awareness.

They end up having this line of thinking backfire on them when they realize the majority of people aren’t in agreement with their worldview on the internet.

Desensitization

People have become desensitized to the toxic online environment.

The current state of the internet has been around for some 13+ years with the inception of social media.

What started out as a place where people posted status updates about what they’re eating has turned into a toxic online environment.

Posting nasty comments, videos, pictures are part of the culture these days. People who troll are just the product of this toxic online environment.

Attention

This goes hand in hand with desensitization. People have become tone deaf to content these days.

The average adult attention span is not infantile. In order for trolls to get attention, they post offensive content. Simple as that.

People will “court attention at all costs.”

This is the state of the internet these days. I can go into more reasons why trolls exist.

Maybe you’re one of these trolls and should examine your own online behavior.

I address how to handle these types of people in other articles. At this point it is all about self-defense in the way of guarding our psychic energy.