Internet trolls can make your online life miserable, and if you spend any real time on social media, you’ve met one. A troll is someone who sows discord on purpose, posting inflammatory or off-topic messages to provoke an emotional reaction or wreck an otherwise normal conversation. They’re not confused, and they’re not trying to help. Disruption is the point.
Trolls deserve no pass, and I don’t buy that they’re harmless pranksters having a laugh. They drive thoughtful people off platforms and poison communities that took years to build, and they get away with it because most of us were raised to answer when spoken to. I think the companies running these platforms deserve a share of the blame for building systems that reward exactly this behavior with attention.
In an age when people share everything online, their politics, their beliefs, their private struggles, trolls have endless material to work with. It infuriates me that the people who open up the most, often the ones who most need a kind word, make the easiest targets. Knowing what draws trolls and how they operate is how you start keeping them out of your life.
What attracts internet trolls?
Trolls gravitate toward situations where they sense they can cause disruption, grab attention, or pull a reaction out of someone.
Trolls deserve no pass, and I don’t buy that they’re harmless pranksters having a laugh.
Certain online behaviors act like a signal flare. Sharing personal or sensitive stories gives them emotional material to exploit. Expressing strong political or religious opinions turns your post into a magnet. Correcting someone, even politely, can draw them. Engaging with a troll at all encourages more. Trending or controversial hashtags raise your visibility to them. Posting about divisive topics, being in the public eye, posting frequently, or defending a cause all increase the odds.
They also pounce on errors, a typo, a factual slip, a misjudgment, as an excuse to ridicule.
They target people displaying success out of resentment. They go after group admins and moderators to challenge authority, and, worst of all, they often target people based on race, gender, sexuality, or other identity markers. Even asking a sincere question in a public forum can invite mockery. The common thread is visibility plus the possibility of a reaction.
| What draws trolls | What it gives them |
|---|---|
| Personal or sensitive stories | Emotional material to exploit |
| Strong political or religious opinions | A post that works like a magnet |
| Correcting someone, even politely | An opening to pounce |
| Engaging with a troll | Encouragement to keep going |
| Trending or controversial hashtags | Higher visibility to them |
| Typos, factual slips, misjudgments | An excuse to ridicule |
| Displaying success | A target for their resentment |
| Being a group admin or moderator | Authority to challenge |
| A sincere question in a public forum | Something to mock |
How do internet trolls operate?
There was a man I knew, call him Tim, who delighted in replying to posts everywhere with covertly and overtly negative responses. He was the perfect troll.
You’d post something about a political figure, and Tim would reply with a comment that wasn’t quite negative but begged for an answer. That was the hook. You’d respond, perfectly reasonably, and his next reply would be a little more negative, and the pattern would repeat until you were ready to explode while Tim rubbed his hands in glee.
Every reasonable answer feeds the next, slightly nastier reply, which is why the post says not to feed the troll.
A skilled troll makes himself look innocent by stirring up so much negativity that no one can tell who started it.
His individual comments seem harmless, but follow the thread back and you find him slyly egging on every response until the conversation collapses in anger or gets deleted. I think this kind does far more damage than the loudmouth, because moderators end up punishing the people who finally snapped while the one who lit the fuse walks away clean. A less skilled troll just posts openly hostile jabs designed to enrage everyone.
My take
You won’t win an argument with a troll, so stop trying. The quiet ones do the most damage, the ones who post something almost harmless and wait for you to bite. Moderators end up punishing whoever finally snapped while the one who lit the fuse walks away clean. Don’t reply. Don’t explain yourself. Block them and get on with your day, and don’t feel a second of guilt about it.
Why can’t you win against an internet troll?
Responding to a troll in any way is called feeding the troll, and it’s exactly what they want. You can’t win a conversation with a troll. They don’t care about you, and they don’t care about the topic. Their only goal is to upset people and destroy communication. Ask them directly and they’ll plead innocence, claiming they were only trying to help or educate you. I don’t believe a word of it, and I wouldn’t spend a minute arguing the point. They exist to make as many people as possible upset, angry, and depressed.
The best response is to give them nothing. Ignore them, and when you spot one, remove them from the conversation or ban them outright. On platforms like Facebook, a permanent block is the cleanest solution. Some people worry that blocking feels cruel or looks like censorship, and I think that worry is exactly what trolls count on. A block protects the conversation from someone who never meant to join it, and everybody else in the thread is better off the moment he’s gone.
Sins of the Internet is my book on what the platforms did to us. It covers how they chose to amplify anger over empathy, the climate trolls thrive in.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Trolling Definition & Meaning, Merriam-Webster
- The State of Online Harassment, Pew Research Center
- UBC Psychology study in Altmetric’s Top 100 for 2014, University of British Columbia, Department of Psychology
