“Trolling”: Is it too much?

To be trolled is infuriating, it’s self destructive, it leaves you wanting to punch a hole straight through the screen you’re staring at, and then you go and take it out on everyone around you.


Can I just start by saying I am a “troll”. For the privileged group of you that don’t know what that means, it means that I make comments online under fake names with the sole aim of getting a negative rise out of someone. I however, have also been “trolled”. To be trolled is infuriating, it’s self destructive, it leaves you wanting to punch a hole straight through the screen you’re staring at, and then you go and take it out on everyone around you.

Recently though, it’s all stopped. What comes around goes around and for me it’s time to take a higher ground. For everyone else the daily troll is somewhat ordinary, I guess now that I’ve experienced both sides I can see how “a bit of bant” can ruin someone’s day or furthermore force them to say something really, really dumb.

Somehow, in Southampton through trolling, we’ve taken a cause with genuinely good intentions (Chloe Green VS Nestle), spun it and bashed it until the sense has been stripped of it and created an attitude to it that most would never imagine well educated individuals like us could produce. The consequences of such trolling is never fully known to many, but to my surprise climaxed in Chloe receiving Kit-Kats by mail, followed by a carton of milk covered in breast pictures. Luckily she sees it in a positive light, and can genuinely laugh at it, but taking another look at it, someone mentioned to me that it could be seen as a hate crime. Is that really where we are?

It all reminds me of first year in halls. I knew some guys that hated the receptionists at Monte for being patronising, rude and petty. So in true fresher wisdom, after a Sunday night of boozing they decided to defecate into a tin and then continue to spoon it in through the back window of the reception. Now at the time we all LOL’ed, but what was the damage…which they were totally unaccountable for. A ruined morning for someone? A couple quid for a can of febreeze? Or did they take it personally? Did the boys even care? No.

Then we’ve got the debate about the arms company (Nick Fidoe VS Position against arms companies by SUSU).  Unfortunately Nick wouldn’t comment on his motivation to try and remove the arms company clause from the constitution, but I can only assume it is because as the president of an engineering school he is trying to act with his students futures in mind. I am 100% confident however, that it is not because he supports the ‘murder of millions of innocent civilians’, as one troll wrote. The fact that the topic was discussed on related articles by trolls and non-cowardly students, I now know upset him. And no matter what you think of the matter, the unaccountability of trolling can contribute to what some see as bullying.

We are supposed to be the future of the country. The educated, passionate and motivated youth that will shape the nation, so when the terms ‘hate crime’ or ‘bullying’ come into conversation about our daily approaches it is a worry. Maybe we need to change our current attitudes before it’s too late? Or just carry on this worthless and ridiculous path.