I installed an extension in my browser to block all comments.

I also put it in the kids' browsers as well.

The thing that bothers me the most is that kids are reading this crap and joining in at that level believing it's OK. I feel an intense responsibility to teach my kids that that level of misogyny, racism and just plain bile is not OK.

If you truly want to feel sick and in the spirit of a bit of Daily Mail bashing, take a look at this article and do a little experiment.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2097330/Dan-Stringer-Picture-tra...

In the comments under the article, look at the tabs for highest and lowest rated comments.

Did it make you cry a little bit?

I didn't see the show, but I'd definitely like to watch it on catch-up so cheers for the heads up.

Trolling can range from someone on here saying Richard Thompson is rubbish, to something far more unpleasant. I have a 'friend' who used to 'troll' another music magazine's website with genuinely disgusting content that would've seen him arrested if he did it now.

He thought he was being hilarious and edgy. The sad thing is, the sort of provocative nastiness he peddled has broken into the mainstream though the likes of Frankie Boyle and Ricky Gervais.

They never tweeted, but I found it rather unnerving. I'd also had some really nasty comments on my blog, and someone had hacked into it and changed my profile, and had written, shall we say, something REALLY uncomplimentary about me.

No one wants to be bullied. I never found out who it as though I have my suspicions. This person is a well-known troll (in certain circles).

I saw that prog too. I was shocked by that guy in Wales. What kind of sick fuck writes that kind of thing and then can live with themself. Bad karma in the extreme.

is to do the inclusionist thing and attempt to post measured, sensible thought to improve the signal to noise ratio. And hang around in places where that happens. And I even post the odd bit of signal in some of the other places too. I do contribute occasionally to The Grauniad's site: I've never felt the need to troll. And no one's gone for me either, though you never know.

Unfortunately, the internet is not a utopian place; it's just like real life, only more so. And that means you get the inevitable parade of pissweasels and filth, along with the civilised, the sane and your friends.

I'm not sure there's anything you can do about this. And even if there is, legislation driven by emotion has a bad track record of either being abused or being counterproductive or ineffective.

I'd always assumed the majority of these trolls were just teenage boys(of whatever age) venting some spleen; and that if I met them in person freed from the gift of anonymity they'd be perfectly normal. Or as close to normal as you get from teenage boys. For comments on the average blog or newspaper site - surely we're all adults and can look after ourselves? if it's kids viewing it, that's surely the resposibility of their parents?

The issue of people commenting on sensitive sites or the very rare instance of someone taking their own life, are surely seperate and highly complex issues that need to be dealt with as a seperate issue - and by people in the know. But the more general issue of people saying negative or thoroughly unpleasant things on website comments sections is not in my view worth spending any time getting upset over. It's just one of the small prices we pay for free speech. Don't read them. It's mostly teenagers trying out their shock muscles.

The freedom to post, unedited and largely ill-regulated, creates its own mentality. There are a high proportion of people online who, I suspect, love to flatter themselves that they're terribly freedom-loving, libertarian, anything-goes.

It's not inevitable that this egocentric bullshit translates into trolling or verbal abuse, but my - wholly-unscientific - suspicion is that it creates a climate where it feels easier, more fun, and less risky. I suspect that the intangible nature of the internet, and the ephemeral nature of much of its discourse, makes it easier to believe that what you write has no consequences, and that your "freedom" and "rights" trump the sensibilities of others.

I could be wrong, though. (Could I feel comfortable admitting that on any other site?)

Another solution: frequent the internet less. Read a book, listen to music, cook some nice food, see friends, or, y'know, *something* that exists in reality. I have limited interent access through circumstances, which I find pretty frustrating, but maybe it's not so unhealthy.

The problem is that, half the time, it isn't trolling. Trolling is the deliberate posting of inflammatory comments merely to provoke a response. A lot of the stuff we're talking about is people posting what they genuinely feel. That their feelings are blinkered, ignorant and hateful is another matter entirely.

I suspect that the intangible nature of the internet, and the ephemeral nature of much of its discourse, makes it easier to believe that what you write has no consequences, and that your "freedom" and "rights" trump the sensibilities of others.

I have first hand experience of someone using Twitter to create, let's say, an "impression" which had consequences for me in a public arena. To this day I still have no idea what their beef was but with social networking such things can linger on when in the past they would have been nipped in the bud face-to-face with a clarification from both sides and a shake of the hand.

A couple of years ago, someone on a forum complaining about asian men grooming and sexually exploiting white girls or traveller gangs abducting homeless people to use as slave labour on tarmacing gangs would've been derided as a rating paranoiac BNP troll.

The same stories, run by The Times a couple of years later and our eyes have been, probably rather uncomfortably in a few cases, opened.

Can a newspaper be accused of Trolling?

....I give you John Gabriel's Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory

http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2004/04/02/penny_arcades_greater_internet_f...

Seems apposite here.

According to Mrs toro, who is a secondary deputy head, the online bullying/trolling thing is a real problem.

To those of us where the worst we see is on this site, and I'm still not convinced that it constitutes bullying (but let's not go there on this thread), it seems pretty incredible that people could want to do such a thing. But it does happen.

She's seen cases where a spat between two girl pupils has escalated considreably after one parties mum joined in saying hateful untruths on facebook. And the advent of every kid having a mobile phone means that they're up to it at break, lunch and on the way out of the school gates at close of play.

She also thinks that Little Gossip should be closed down as it's home to some really vindictive stuff.

My answer was, well why do people give others access to their profiles to leave messages? Why not block them? Why not report them to parents/schools/police? Why not just stop using social networking sites anyway?

None of these addresses the underlying problem which is that some people consider it big and/or clever to troll and bully on line. I suspect that most of them wouldn't say those things to a persons face, and presumably wouldn't like it done back to them either. As for the lowlife on the programme last night, I can't even begin to put together words that express my contempt for him.

It grieves me that I share both air and the right to vote with such a person.

a transcript of an interesting programme about how US conservative and liberals view the world. I didn't agree with all of it, but there were certainly some interesting points made.

Part of it was related to this whole issue of the effect of the Internet in an increasingly polarised world (and the discussion on how the US became so polarised is fascinating. I don't know enough about it but would be interested in views). Jonathan Haidt, author of a new book "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion", said the following:

The third [major historical facts, or changes, that have gotten us into the mess that we're in] is that America has gone from being a nation with localities that were diverse by class, in particular, let's say. You had rich people, and poor people living together.

It's become, in the post-war world, gradually a nation of lifestyle enclaves, where people chose to self-segregate. If people are concentrating just with people who are like them, then they're not exposed to the ideas from the other side, from people that they can actually like and respect. If you get all your ideas about the other side from the internet, where there's no human connection, it's just so easy, and automatic to reject it, and demonize it. So once we've sorted ourselves into homogeneous moral communities, it becomes a lot harder to work together.

That does make sense to me in terms of how I've seen debate split into very defined sides on the bottom half of the Internet, and must surely feed into a culture where trolling is more prevalent.

http://billmoyers.com/episode/how-do-conservatives-and-liberals-see-the-...

... using the internet to mostly confirm your own worldview.

So left minded people follow a lot of similarly minded invividuals, as do those on the right and the information recieved get becomes an echo chamber of what you already believe. Whereas in the real world you'd need to rub alongside people with whom you disagree.

I didn't take it to mean economics, rather culture. It's a rare individual who doen't just use the internet to get back up arguments for what you already believe.

I have to say that I follow quite a few people on twitter whose opinions I consider to be pretty much beyond the pale, what they write certainly looks like trolling to me. But then again, I am nothing short of incredibly reasonable at all times.

Never heard of Little Gossip though.

Caught him red-handed about to start a nasty thread about Macca's new album.

In the lobby of the public swimming baths, Brian and Tyler found their way blocked by several identical, upwardly-mobile, young black men, sporting giant afros and wearing expensive grey suits:

"Pool's closed" said one of the men.

Brian and Tyler were all like “WTF bro!?”

"Pools closed due to AIDS and stingrays."

Tyler took a few moments to process this information.

"Brian, would I be right in saying that you have AIDS?"

“Alas you are correct. I caught the HIV retrovirus from your mother, who I am reliably informed contacted the disease from your good self. You in turn contracted it from Hitler, who is also your dad.”

Just then a young girl poked her head around the door.

“Excu...

“TITS OR GET THE F**K OUT!” everyone yelled:

The girl disappeared and was never seen or heard of again.

“Regrettably the sudden appearance or prolonged absence of giant mammary glands makes very little difference in regard to our current swimming predicament,” observed Brian

“Beat your enemies until they cry. Swim laps in a pools of their tears,” growled a demented looking wolf who had somehow slunk into the lobby unnoticed.

Etc...

when you say nothing of trolls

/mike giggler, by email