I Don't Feed Trolls
If you think that everyone here in SW or in any social media site are just people "passing the time", sharing their thoughts and having some fun, think again... Long gone are the days when internet trolls were simply bored, annoying teenage kids looking for attention. While us in the so-called "Western world" naively enjoy our freedom of expression and believe that all users around us share this same freedom, we fail to realize that in places where "freedom" is considered disrupting, anarchic and undesirable (say, Russia, China and the like) there are veritable "troll armies", people whose job is solely troll Western social media with the aim of sowing divisions and stir hatred in the Western democracies, weakening us. That is, attempting to use democracy and freedom of expression against the very societies which champion them.
Why? The greatest threat to totalitarian regimes is having their people doubt their legitimacy and start thinking that freedom and democracy are "good things". Thus the logical strategy is trying to discredit "freedom and democracy" by generating chaos and confusion in these very democracies, and then claiming "democracy is bad!: Freedom leads to chaos!"
Does it seem like a far-fetched conspiracy theory claiming that social media has become an ideological battlefield with state-sponsored, target trolling aiming to change public opinion and cause disruption and division? Then look again at recent history, note how polarized Western society has become, how "extremism", left and right, seems to be on the rise... And notice how there was been a real weakening of the "Western world"... Brexit's weakening of both the EU and the UK itself, Trump's "America 1st" policy shattering NATO's unity and purpose for the first time in its history; far-right, anti-democratic extremism in central-European countries like Poland and Hungary, rise of anti-EU forces in France and Italy, secessionist moves in Spain... Who benefits the most from a divided "West"?
I'm not saying that every and each hateful and divisive post out there is made by these state-sponsored "troll armies", but these "troll armies" get the ball rolling, stirring up opinion, encouraging people with sympathy for the most outlandish, hateful and divisive ideas to speak up and heat things up, and in the process get everyone distracted from important issues that must be addressed (like, say, spiraling debt, which in itself weakens countries, and which has ultimately caused the downfall of many empires, from the Roman to the British).
Then there are the run-of-the-mill catfishes who prey on naive, lonely people (mostly men I'd think) hoping to steal identities, blackmail or scam in some way...
Bottom line: be smart, don't take everything that is posted at face value. Whenever you read something that really pisses you off (or if it seems too good to be true), ask yourself: is there some [i]deeper intention[/i] behind this message? Does this person really mean what they post, or are they just following a script seeking to disrupt, or discredit certain users who stand up to them...? I've been in SW for a while and I've been fascinated to see first-hand some trolling patterns that go above and beyond being simply "anti-social" or plain "angry", but use some intense manipulative tricks that seem to be taken out of a "professional trolling manual". Or maybe it's just me being far-fetched.
Let's not be naive. If someone tries to troll you with personal insults or arguments that don't even have anything to do with what you originally wrote, *ignore* them. It's not worth your time. It's not your job engaging in pointless, arguments. That's [i]their[/i] job, not yours.
Why? The greatest threat to totalitarian regimes is having their people doubt their legitimacy and start thinking that freedom and democracy are "good things". Thus the logical strategy is trying to discredit "freedom and democracy" by generating chaos and confusion in these very democracies, and then claiming "democracy is bad!: Freedom leads to chaos!"
Does it seem like a far-fetched conspiracy theory claiming that social media has become an ideological battlefield with state-sponsored, target trolling aiming to change public opinion and cause disruption and division? Then look again at recent history, note how polarized Western society has become, how "extremism", left and right, seems to be on the rise... And notice how there was been a real weakening of the "Western world"... Brexit's weakening of both the EU and the UK itself, Trump's "America 1st" policy shattering NATO's unity and purpose for the first time in its history; far-right, anti-democratic extremism in central-European countries like Poland and Hungary, rise of anti-EU forces in France and Italy, secessionist moves in Spain... Who benefits the most from a divided "West"?
I'm not saying that every and each hateful and divisive post out there is made by these state-sponsored "troll armies", but these "troll armies" get the ball rolling, stirring up opinion, encouraging people with sympathy for the most outlandish, hateful and divisive ideas to speak up and heat things up, and in the process get everyone distracted from important issues that must be addressed (like, say, spiraling debt, which in itself weakens countries, and which has ultimately caused the downfall of many empires, from the Roman to the British).
Then there are the run-of-the-mill catfishes who prey on naive, lonely people (mostly men I'd think) hoping to steal identities, blackmail or scam in some way...
Bottom line: be smart, don't take everything that is posted at face value. Whenever you read something that really pisses you off (or if it seems too good to be true), ask yourself: is there some [i]deeper intention[/i] behind this message? Does this person really mean what they post, or are they just following a script seeking to disrupt, or discredit certain users who stand up to them...? I've been in SW for a while and I've been fascinated to see first-hand some trolling patterns that go above and beyond being simply "anti-social" or plain "angry", but use some intense manipulative tricks that seem to be taken out of a "professional trolling manual". Or maybe it's just me being far-fetched.
Let's not be naive. If someone tries to troll you with personal insults or arguments that don't even have anything to do with what you originally wrote, *ignore* them. It's not worth your time. It's not your job engaging in pointless, arguments. That's [i]their[/i] job, not yours.
