Offline Education for Trolls Needed to Clean up Online Vulgarities
"That argument you made is totally BS, you clearly do not know what you are talking about!" Words of such bluntness often grace the comment section of any internet forums or news sites. People from complete different backgrounds and locations easily dish out such harsh criticisms to others based on a mere few sentences posted, instantly heating up the arena for more vulgar exchanges that often follow. Even the most intellectual and politely-worded articles on the Internet, through such exchanges in the comment section, become fields of barbarous personal assaults within days of the article's original appearance.
Surely, the power of the Internet in connecting people from completely different walks of life cannot be 100% positive. Simply because most of the people discussing any issue on forums will never meet each other in life, and may not even see each other again on the Internet, there is absolutely no reservations when it comes to harshness of the criticisms. For most people, hurting others' feelings would not cause remorse when there is no chance of meeting face-to-face.
However, it is perhaps useful to believe that having a conversation with another person on the cyberspace is, no matter how emotionless, a conversation with another real person. It is useful to imagine the receiver of one's often harsh comments sitting in front of his or her computer at home or work, quietly fuming how and why his or her otherwise innocent-sounding words can lead to such barbarous replies. The receiver would often become less interested in posting online or worse, degrade into an overly harsh online critic just like everyone else.
As more and more of such harsh cyber-critics appear, one cannot help but worry about the decreasing qualities of online conversations. Even as sites like Facebook promote use of real names online, the all-too-frequent instances of such "scold-and-go" attitude cannot possibly make online conversations more lively and constructive. Each user will be less and less willing to present their true and honest views in public, knowing that their views will simply be rudely taken apart by others who often simply do not care enough to reply with more courtesy.
Yet, looking at cyberspace today, every method that can possibly be used to prevent these so-called "trolling" are already being used. Besides the "real name" posting features introduced by likes of Facebook to track down the real identities of trolls, there are numerous "spam reporting" features to alert the moderators of forums. Now, more than ever, the regulatory functions of cyber-forums are allowing trolls to be quickly discovered and banned...But trolling has not gone away. If anything, the difficulty to persist on trolling has made it more popular.
The real solution of the problem, perhaps, is a focus on offline education rather than online regulation. Too many of our Internet users today use trolling as a way to show some sort of personal pride: that they have strong personal beliefs, that they are experts on the subjects of their fuming, and they have the social stature to be talking condescendingly. What they do not realize that, instead, their repeatedly trolling can become the proof of the exact opposite of their desired qualities.
Indeed, blunt bashing of others' arguments using vulgarities illustrates the troll's lack of rationality in his or her thought. It is because that the troll cannot write with logical progression of ideas to refute the existing arguments. Their lack of logic can only be made up by appeal to (negative) emotions, scaring away those who are against them into submission. They somehow create that illusion of their intellectual superiority not by outarguing others but censoring good retorts. It is a clear display of cowardice, intellectual incapacity, and overall personal weakness.
By placing these trolls into similar situations in their real lives, people can demonstrate to them just how absurd their behaviors really are. Seeing how others will simply ignore them when confronted with characteristic harshness, the trolls will understand, finally, that exchanging ideas with others is about polite compromises in speaking to ensure deeper emotional connections, not about loudly proclaiming the superiority of one's ideas while giving others no chance to reply . Such education is certainly needed to clean up our increasingly hostile cyberspace.
Surely, the power of the Internet in connecting people from completely different walks of life cannot be 100% positive. Simply because most of the people discussing any issue on forums will never meet each other in life, and may not even see each other again on the Internet, there is absolutely no reservations when it comes to harshness of the criticisms. For most people, hurting others' feelings would not cause remorse when there is no chance of meeting face-to-face.
However, it is perhaps useful to believe that having a conversation with another person on the cyberspace is, no matter how emotionless, a conversation with another real person. It is useful to imagine the receiver of one's often harsh comments sitting in front of his or her computer at home or work, quietly fuming how and why his or her otherwise innocent-sounding words can lead to such barbarous replies. The receiver would often become less interested in posting online or worse, degrade into an overly harsh online critic just like everyone else.
As more and more of such harsh cyber-critics appear, one cannot help but worry about the decreasing qualities of online conversations. Even as sites like Facebook promote use of real names online, the all-too-frequent instances of such "scold-and-go" attitude cannot possibly make online conversations more lively and constructive. Each user will be less and less willing to present their true and honest views in public, knowing that their views will simply be rudely taken apart by others who often simply do not care enough to reply with more courtesy.
Yet, looking at cyberspace today, every method that can possibly be used to prevent these so-called "trolling" are already being used. Besides the "real name" posting features introduced by likes of Facebook to track down the real identities of trolls, there are numerous "spam reporting" features to alert the moderators of forums. Now, more than ever, the regulatory functions of cyber-forums are allowing trolls to be quickly discovered and banned...But trolling has not gone away. If anything, the difficulty to persist on trolling has made it more popular.
The real solution of the problem, perhaps, is a focus on offline education rather than online regulation. Too many of our Internet users today use trolling as a way to show some sort of personal pride: that they have strong personal beliefs, that they are experts on the subjects of their fuming, and they have the social stature to be talking condescendingly. What they do not realize that, instead, their repeatedly trolling can become the proof of the exact opposite of their desired qualities.
Indeed, blunt bashing of others' arguments using vulgarities illustrates the troll's lack of rationality in his or her thought. It is because that the troll cannot write with logical progression of ideas to refute the existing arguments. Their lack of logic can only be made up by appeal to (negative) emotions, scaring away those who are against them into submission. They somehow create that illusion of their intellectual superiority not by outarguing others but censoring good retorts. It is a clear display of cowardice, intellectual incapacity, and overall personal weakness.
By placing these trolls into similar situations in their real lives, people can demonstrate to them just how absurd their behaviors really are. Seeing how others will simply ignore them when confronted with characteristic harshness, the trolls will understand, finally, that exchanging ideas with others is about polite compromises in speaking to ensure deeper emotional connections, not about loudly proclaiming the superiority of one's ideas while giving others no chance to reply . Such education is certainly needed to clean up our increasingly hostile cyberspace.
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