The goal of a troll is to engage their victims in an online argument – so the most effective way to deal with them is to ignore them. This may be harder than it sounds, particularly when someone has said something to make you angry.

Why do people troll?

There are many reasons why people might troll online, and its different from one troll to the next. Dr Mark Griffiths, Professor of Behavioural Addiction at Nottingham Trent University said: “Most people troll others for either revenge, for attention seeking, for boredom, and for personal amusement.”

Whats considered trolling?

The Oxford Dictionary describes trolling as making “a deliberately offensive or provocative online posting with the aim of upsetting someone or eliciting an angry response from them”.

What are the characteristics of a troll?

Trolls are characterised by the Dark Tetrad of personality traits, including psychopathy, Machiavellianism, Narcissism and sadism. In internet parlance, a troll is generally defined as a person who posts abusive, insulting, inflammatory, extraneous, off-topic or digressive messages in an online community.

Why is it called trolling?

The English noun troll in the standard sense of ugly dwarf or giant dates to 1610 and comes from the Old Norse word troll meaning giant or demon. Early non-Internet slang use of trolling can be found in the military: by 1972 the term trolling for MiGs was documented in use by US Navy pilots in Vietnam.