Recently in the Syracuse, NY area there were two tragic deaths, both were victims of crime. I watched news reporting of the deaths and saw many beautiful posts on Facebook honoring the people who passed away. I did not know either victim and felt compassion and sympathy for the families and friends who now are grieving.
The TV news reporting surprisingly reported on Facebook pages and online forums which praised the victims and as TV news usually does, the reporters true story was about the inappropriate posts, pages and forum comments on social media. The TV reporter was prohibited from reading the posts, they were that horrible. The posts were from anonymous trolls who used the victims to get attention that trolls desperately seek.
I myself experienced interacting online with a troll, it was awful at the time because we knew who it was all along, so did two good friends of ours. The troll who affected me threatened to burn our house down and hurt us all over drama surrounding a band breakup. I called the police, gave them information and let them take care of it because it is a crime to threaten anyone with harm online, I was scared. This troll stopped interacting online, for a while at least. See, trolls seek attention and we fed this troll by defending ourselves, a bad choice. We see the troll occasionally post once and a while, we ignore it, a good choice.
So if you see a flaming post, ignore it. If you are baited, don’t respond. If you are insulted, realize the troll source may not even know you. Try your best not to take trolls seriously, it’s attention they seek and will thrive if fed. Ignoring any flaming, bashing or troll like behavior is the best way to defeat them. Use the forms use policy against the trolls, report any content as inappropriate. Most forums or social media sites have use policies, all I’ve seen prohibit flaming, bashing and trolls. If you are threatened in any way online, call the police. Threatening harm to a person online is a serious crime.
Facebook has a Statement of Rights and Responsibilities and a means for reporting violations of it. Since Facebook is a popular Social Media network, here is a link to it. http://www.facebook.com/terms.php
