The Sunday Mail
Norah Spie Perfect Mindset
The internet has revolutionised the way we live, think and behave. Just like the cellphone, I cannot imagine living without it now and yet l once did.
Just like everything in life, the internet comes with the good and the bad. If companies did an audit of how employees use the internet, they would find some shocking behavioural patterns. People have moved from playing Solitaire to browsing the net. Whatever happened to Solitaire anyway?
I conducted an unsolicited research on internet usage and online psychology among Zimbabweans with the help of my friend and social media strategist Jocelyn Nyaguse. The findings are an eye opener. In my perfect world, Zimbabwe should have a centre of internet user behaviour.
I wanted to go to the root cause of why certain people become trolls.
Firstly, what is a troll?
The actual meaning of a ‘troll’ is an ugly cave-dwelling creature depicted as either a giant or a dwarf. Then in comes the internet and the trolls came alive! In internet slang according to Wikipedia — ‘a troll is a person who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community such as a forum, chat room, blog, news site with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion’.
Urban Dictionary (yes this is commonly referenced these days probably more than the Oxford dictionary) describes trolling as, ‘ being a prick on the internet because you can. Typically unleashing one or more cynical or sarcastic remarks on an innocent by-stander, because it is the internet and you can!’
The original meaning of ‘troll’ is not too far off from the urban definition. It is an ugly, dirty, angry creature that lives in dark places and waits to snatch anything that passes by. In many ways, the mythological troll is similar to the internet troll. The internet troll hides behind a computer screen and in the case of Zimbabwe, it is mainly behind a smart-phone.
Internet trolls actively go out of their way to cause trouble on the internet. They do it so religiously that one would think they are being paid. There is a small number that gets paid to troll but in the case of Zimbabwe, not much money exchanges hands for trolling services.
Worldwide, YouTube is known as the trailer park of internet because most nasty comments are found on popular videos. Here, in beloved Zimbabwe, Facebook and news site comments share the cup!
Another platform used by trolls is email. This is usually a whistle-blower who sort of goes over board and loses credibility along the way.
To use email to troll, one must really be aggrieved. This usually involves using an internet café, setting up a web based email account like Yahoo (it still has less security and verification features), then writing the actual email message, and finally putting together a distribution list and clicking ‘send’. There has been a few email troll-based scandals in Zimbabwe.
Most are to do with organisational politics, disgruntled workers, sex scandals and church or school misappropriation of funds.
Let’s go back to social media and the patterns and behaviours of trolls. Why and how does one end up being a troll?
Across the human race, the common reasons include but are not limited to depression, attention-seeking, anger, sadness, jealous, narcissistic or other emotions they are not conscious of that influences their behaviour online.
For a long time I believed Zimbabweans are the worst when it comes to trolling. This is not the case. Trolling is everywhere and cuts across race, socio-economic standing and location. It is because we are naturally more concerned about our own people and our country.
Trolls also tend to vent more to people closer to them. For example, it is more ‘satisfying’ to troll on Bev than to troll on Blac Chyna (these women are both raunchy dancers, one in Zimbabwe and the other in America). Interestingly, the comments on Bev are very similar to those posted on Blac Chyna’s wall.
Trolling on a local MP in Zimbabwe is similar to an MP in any other country. So if you are being trolled, there is little comfort in knowing that it is not about you but more to do with the chemical imbalance of the troll.
The two major reasons why people troll are ‘anonymity and perceived lack of consequences’. Let me say, just like a fingerprint, the internet is 100 percent traceable if the offence is that important to the authorities. A digital footprint might be harder to track down but Facebook for example has spent millions of dollars making sure they know every bit about their user. Everything that happens on the internet is stored somewhere so the part of being ‘anonymous’ is inconsequential.
In the case of Zimbabwean trolls, here is what we found out;
-With the high costs of data, one wonders how they afford to stay online all day and just troll. Well, they are not paying for the internet connections. Most of the trolls are in ‘free-wifi’ zones. These could be workplaces or someone’s wifi. Most of them however are just bored at work and the majority are in Harare and in the diaspora.
-They are motivated by the attention they get. So they keep pushing the boundaries in a quest for more attention and reactions.
-Surprisingly most trolls use real names! They want the followings and actually believe nothing will happen to them. The computer screen is the perceived protector.
-Most do it for no particular reason and the rest do it because in real life, they feel they have no voice.
So the battle between freedom of speech and cyberbullying rages on. There is a thin grey line between exercising your right to free speech and breaking the law. We have created this world!
Norah Spie is author, journalist and communications consultant. She writes in her personal capacity and can be reached viaemail :[email protected] or Twitter : @norahspie
