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In a world where everyone is just a click away from everyone else (and since Twitter exploded on the scene, celebs have been no exception), it is easy to troll pretty much anyone you want to. Comments can range from the relatively mild(but snarky) ‘‘@chetan_bhagat: Do you know that your last tweet was better than your last book?’’ to the downright obscene : “ @juniorbachchan: I don’t know what the f***you were smoking , dude, but I wish I could b***-slap you for doing that f***-all Raavan movie!! (sic).” Still others will simply spam the comment thread with irrelevant links and other junk.

THEY’RE EVERYWHERE!
Now you might imagine that trolls are bespectacled internet nerds, college kids who have nothing better to do than sit in the dark in front of their monitors, smug grins plastered across their faces as they watch their keystrokes raising hackles in the online world. But you couldn’t be further from the truth. In reality, trolls are normal people like you and I – stu- dents, writers, computer professionals, lawyers and bankers- with a penchant for letting their dark side out once they get online.

“Oh, there are a lot of jerks on the internet,” says social media consultant Priyanka Sacher, “they abuse the anonymity that they get online. But my point is , just because you are anonymous doesn’t give you the right to say anything you want to say!”







So why do trolls troll? There are as many reasons as there are trolls. Many trolls are just practical jokers attempting to amuse themselves and their audience. Some have genuine animosity toward a particular group or individual that they believe has done them wrong. And some others are just contemptible hooligans bent on disrupting peaceful exchange of useful information for their own perverted pleasure. I think the virtual world is a more relaxed space than the real world,” says actor Riteish Deshmukh (@RiteishD on Twitter), who admits that he gets his share of nasty comments on the site, “and what happens is that people tend to let their guard down a little and display their dark side. You’re moving into a space you in which you feel that no one is watching you. So it’s like an I-AM-THE-KINNG-OG-THE-WORLD kind of a feeling,”he adds.

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… but should you be one? Trolls are people who post rude, offensive and often abusive massages all over the Web – on websites, blogs and social networking sites. Trolls have been around in other countries such as the US for years; now they’re making their presence felt in Indian cyberspace too. How on earth does one deal with them?(And why the *#@& do they do it?)

A FEW MONTHE BACK, director Karan Johar posted a message to his two-and-a-half lakh plus followers on micro-blogging site, Twitter. “While most tweets are objective, frank and warm… the ones that are constantly making tactless statements about my personal life are upsetting,” wrote Johar. “Critical appraisal and analysis is more than welcome…but insinuations and comments about my life, choices and orientation are NOT…”

Within minutes, Johar’s tweet was picked up and retweeted thousands of times.

“Block them all, Karan,” tweeted actress and fellow tweeter Sonam Kapoor. “Block them on your Twitter account, they are haters who are just jealous.”

Johar may not know it, but he just got walloped by ‘rolls.’ And by that, we don’t mean he got clubbed by the fat, hairy, ugly, smelly, goat-eating monsters that feature regularly in children’s tales(Remember the first Harry Potter book?.) Instead, ‘troll’ is the official internet lingo for these ‘haters’ who disrupt online conversation by hurling abuse and posting rude and offensive comments ass over cyberspace – in forums, chat rooms, news websites, social networking sites and blogs. The term was first adopted by internet users in the United States in the late1980s, when most of the Web consisted of little more than newsgroups.







Early trolling was relatively innocuous, taking place inside of small, single-topic forums. The goal was simple – wreaking havoc in a perfectly peaceful internet community. For example:

Troll (posting in a sports discussion forum): “I think the FIFA sucks and the World Cup was a **** event!”

Sports aficionados would immediately pounce and soon, the board would be filled with an intense, raging debate. From a troll’s point of view, this was Mission Accomplished.

The internet of today, however is much more than esoteric discussion forums. With the rise of social networking sites, it has become a mass medium for defining who we are to ourselves and others. And as our emotional investment in the internet has grown, the stakes for trolling – provoking strangers online have just gone up.

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