Mar 1 - Study suggests internet trolls may not be mentally healthy in real life

[Kisame]

no shyt....trolls r losers mostly in real life...i know because i use to be one

you're still a loser

 

[hypo666]

The internet trolls in the UK who take it too far, making death threats, rape threats etc etc and end up in court are always unmarried unemployed unwashed looking losers who look like they have never seen daylight for some time and mostly male . There was one exception that puzzled me , a man in his early thirties, an army physical training instructor with a wife who was a doctor or something. , yet he was caught out telling a 60 yr old feminist female who is well known in the media ,how he wanted ram his cock down her throat, ass fukk her , ,all the shyt he said was told in court ,or reported in the media.

I have no idea what his malfunction was,or what his wife thought about it .

 

[bangedher_wholesquad]

Yeah I can see that.

Gotta think 7438947390 minutes for a good comeback when some ppl can do that shyt instantaneously IRL.

Charm and Wit will never lose its place amongst Real Life Communication.

I guess internet trolling makes up for it for those who wish to be funny IRL.

 

[Azul]

Say word

 

[Raava]

Clearly some are mentally unstable, no shocker there.

 

[ThaRealness]

I mean... not only are they attention seekers, theyre looking to get attention in the cheapest possible way.

This isnt exactly suprising...

 

[A.V.]

no shyt....trolls r losers mostly in real life...i know because i use to be one

Used to be a troll........or used to be a loser?

 

[Wild self]

Clearly some are mentally unstable, no shocker there.

You ain't all that stable, either

Besides, we are merely embracing the future. Imagine how messageboards are gonna be in 20 years when shyt gets super-advanced ?

 

[The Burger King]

I doubt they're Dark Triads though. Most psychopaths/sociopaths can actually get laid, and we all know the strong majority of these basement dwellers ain't getting no p*ssy.

 

[skeetsinternal]

 

[yo moms]

im not a troll. i just post real things that are happening in my life.

 

[RAX 010]

trolls are anonymous losers who dont have to be accountable for their actions

they ruin the internet and will lead to the govt regulating everything

thx alot

 

[mortuus est]

im a troll, but i also wear suits once in a while

 

[Sugar]

Duh.com

 

[unit321]

A new study from the University of Manitoba has shockingly claimed to have found that the Internet trolls we all know or love so well may not be very nice -- or particularly mentally healthy -- individuals in real life. The study tried to explore whether or not Internet trolls fell into the so called Dark Tetrad: Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), narcissism (egotism and self-obsession), psychopathy (the lack of remorse and empathy), and sadism (pleasure in the suffering of others). The study (mostly survey, really) claims to have found:

"... correlations, sometimes quite significant, between these traits and trolling behavior. What’s more, it also found a relationship between all Dark Tetrad traits (except for narcissism) and the overall time that an individual spent, per day, commenting on the Internet."
It's worth noting that the survey found, by and large, that most people online are perfectly reasonable and decent human beings. At the very least they're just quiet lurkers:

"To be sure, only 5.6 percent of survey respondents actually specified that they enjoyed "trolling." By contrast, 41.3 percent of Internet users were “non-commenters,” meaning they didn’t like engaging online at all. So trolls are, as has often been suspected, a minority of online commenters, and an even smaller minority of overall Internet users."​

The study appears to rely heavily on subjects pulled from Amazon's Mechanical Turk, who may not be a good control representative of what constitutes normal behavior, either online or off. The study also appears to be rather heavily reliant on simply asking people if they liked to be jerks on the Internet -- which if I were an Internet troll, I'm not sure I'd answer correctly. Reading their analysis and methodology, it's not clear to me if the researchers did (or could) calculate how anonymity can turn a relatively normal person into a blathering jackass (as this classic Penny Arcade comic illustrates in deep scientific detail).

Is somebody necessarily a sadist offline because anonymity turns them into a jerk when they're online? Isn't it possible that people act worse online because the sense of anonymity gives them the belief they're free from repercussion and can therefore experiment with darker, but not necessarily dominant, aspects of their personality they'd fear to explore offline? Wouldn't that especially be true of children, who may express anger at their lack of power through online rage, but develop into perfectly normal people as they age?

You can dig through the full methodology yourself, assuming you're smart enough, professor. Those shoes make you look fat. I'd also like to point out that the Beatles sucked, Internet Explorer is the vastly superior browser, the RIAA makes a lot of solid points based on sound scientific data, the Comcast merger will help cure cancer and save puppies, and my little sister is much better than you are at this game, bro.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/2...-are-narcissistic-psychopathic-sadistic.shtml

I believe it, half the people on here including myself are weirdos in real life.

Wait, so they spent time and money on a study that was something Captain Obvious could have told us. Canadians.