Internet Trolls and "Knights" in White Satin.

Hello!

There was a time when the word 'Troll' used to spark frightful images of ugly giants living underneath bridges waiting to eat poor unsuspecting children. Think Jimmy Savile with eczema. Then in the 1980's trolls would incur images of cute, loveable, little frizzy-haired dolls which had a permanent smile and were about as frightening as a sleeping kitten farting and waking itself up suddenly.

But now in the 2010's there is a new meaning of the word 'Troll'. This time it incurs images of spotty little sad acts typing on a keyboard and giggling at how clever they are, having mocked a family who just lost their child. Or having harassed some vacuous celebrity oxygen thief who neither knows of, or cares about, the existence of these bellends. The definition of 'internet troll' runs thus;

"An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion."

 - Urban Dictionary

"I Love Annoying Pathetic Bastards"

These specimens unfortunately take advantage of peoples' right to free speech, by hounding either high profile celebrities, or worse, normal people and children who neither deserve it or asked for it.

It doesn't take much to set a troll off, as they seem to take the deepest offense for the slightest reason. I remember I was trolled for a while, and for literally the silliest reason. I tweeted a compliment about The Moody Blues song 'Nights in White Satin', but my autocorrect changed 'Nights' to 'Knights'. This was enough to set some Moody Blues fangirl off, and she became very abusive towards me initially for getting the name wrong, and then for unrelated subjects, commenting on tweets of mines which involved neither her nor the Moody Blues. I thought it was hilarious at first, before I finally got a bit bored of it all and blocked her. Thank fuck I didn't say that the song was shit.

Fathers Ted & Dougal Protest Against Internet Trolls

There have been several high profile cases of these smartarses being taken task by the courts and in some cases sent to prison. The initial reaction is to cheer them getting some kind of comeuppance. But in the cold rational light of day, to jail people for being arseholes with their mouth sits ill at ease with peoples' God given right to be arseholes at all. So perhaps a different kind of punishment is required. Perhaps temporarily banning them from owning or operating anything with an electric plug would be a start. At least it would prevent adding to the already overburdened prison system. On a negative note though, the disposable tissue and internet porn industries would take a hammering.

I'm sure that behind every high profile internet trolling case which hits the headlines there will be plenty of politicians ready with kneejerk soundbites declaring 'Things Must Change!'. They're about as effective as a sniper with a peashooter in the desert wearing a clown costume. They'd be as well taking a leaf out of Father Ted's book and waving homemade signs in Parliament in front of the cameras on Prime Minister's Questions reading 'Down with This Sort of Thing' and 'Careful Now'.

Kieran x