The Psychology of Trolls by Sinkie Miss World Contestant Jeraldine Phneah

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:





My recent cyberbullying incident has got me interested in thinking about why people are more aggressive online and the motivations of internet trolls in general.

It didn't make sense because many of the victims (including me) have never spoken or interacted with these trolls/bullies before. Why would someone want to destroy the reputation, belittle and hurt another whom they do not even know in real life?


Why would people think that they know someone so well and are in a position to pass judgement about others on a public platform to contribute to destroying their reputation?

Especially if it is someone who have never done anything to harm them before.

Only a psychotic person, incapable of empathy, or someone perpetually engulfed by rage, would make such degrading comments in public.

There must be reasons for why people often throw out personal attacks, sexist remarks or things designed to deliberately hurt and destroy others.

Many blame the nature of the internet which I agree with. Sometimes, the medium could bring out the worst in us. People feel alone when they’re typing on a computer, even if they’re in a public “place” like a chat room on Facebook and this results in some kind of emotional dislocation

However, I won't be too quick to blame technology totally. After all, there are so many people with internet and there is a significant percentage who are peaceful, rational and exhibit pro social behaviors online. And, if people are truly good at heart, no medium will be able to bring out the monster in them.

Feeling curious. I read up on some article online which provided some interesting reasons. Here are my findings:

1) Sadism
"Trolls intentions are to cause disruption and/or to trigger or exacerbate conflict for the purposes of their own amusement." - Claire Hardaker (Ph.D. thesis Trolling in Asynchronous Computer-Mediated Communication)

2) Attention even if negative


3) The feeling of power and control


4)Hate and Anger
"Blatant hater, obvious for you and everyone else to ignore. Their comments usually read something like, “So much cringe! Die in a fire!” Anyone with an IQ higher than a canine can skim over these comments without so much as blinking." - Danny Horgan


5) Jealousy and the need to feel superior
This type of troll is more subtle and sometimes frustrating. They try to destroy the credibility of whatever it is they’re trolling and do this through talking down to them, nitpicking on their writing, chewing it up and spitting it out.

It happens a lot on YouTube where great songs, comedy videos, and articles are “critiqued” by other musicians, comedians, and writers to the point that the creator almost feels bad for putting the project out there.

These people are actually suffering from low self-esteem and insecurity. They desire to put others down so they can leverage on this to appear like 'experts' in this field, either intellectually or morally superior. However, truly confident people, actual 'experts'or morally-upright people don’t sit around criticizing others on Youtube, Social media and Internet forums all day.

In fact, the exact opposite is true. Most people who feel compelled to share their “knowledge” online are failures in the field they’re trolling. They have an interest in the same field as the creator, but because they never achieved the type of success they had wished for, they project their frustration out onto those who are trying to achieve it.

Like I have said before, people who are truly confident of their looks and intelligence don't have to call others dumb. As a female myself, I know for sure that no woman would ever make fun of another girl's looks unless she feels somewhat inferior to her.

Think about it - Does Armchair Critic call or make people feel stupid? Does Andrew Loh go around correcting people's grammar or nitpicking on their posts? Do Miranda Kerr and Naomi Campbell publicly call another woman ugly or fat?


6) People who don't quite fit in socially
What I noticed about those who make sexist remarks or sexual threats to women online is that they are usually the type who are not popular among women or cannot get a girlfriend easily.

As such, they use such language in general to probably try to feel that they are in control of women, above them and dominant in a sense.

However, this does not apply to all of them. Others could be influenced by pop culture and all and used it without even realizing it is disrespectful to women.


7) The one common trait that all trolls share is their lack of well-being in the real world.
Think about it – if you were getting what you wanted out of life – love, passion, success – would you still spend your time on Internet forums critiquing others? Obviously not.

What kind of person would spend so much time, and so much energy, engaging in virtual hate and personal attacks? People with fulfilling lives have better things to do.

What is worrying now is that the acceptance of trolling and all and putting blame on victims for 'not being strong' is like normalizing verbal abuse and public humiliation in society. We are giving any individual/group with an agenda to tear down the reputation of any regular citizen any time they want.

Is there really free speech on the internet or is free speech given only to those who shout the loudest or with their khakis? While the rest who are 'too weak' are told that they are unqualified to take part in online discussions or share their perspectives.

According to Art Markman, Professor of Psychology of the University of Texas at Austin, media outlets should cut down on the anger and hatred that have become the norm in reader exchanges.

"It's valuable to allow all sides of an argument to be heard. But it's not valuable for there to be personal attacks, or to have messages with an extremely angry tone. Even someone who is making a legitimate point but with an angry tone is hurting the nature of the argument, because they are promoting people to respond in kind....If on a website comments are left up that are making personal attacks in the nastiest way, you're sending the message that this is acceptable human behavior."

Despite everything, I choose to love and respect others, even if they have hurt me.



I choose to bear in mind at all times that even though the internet is a free space, it doesn't give me the freedom to verbally abuse others as they are human beings too. They have parents, sisters, friends and all just like I do.

I choose to never make a public and personal attack at others, even though I was criticized by others for not being strong enough to do so.

There are so many nasty things I could say to make fun of Lim Jialiang, the NTU Sociology student who started the cyber attacks against me and Vincent Wijeysingha for his sexist comments.. but I won't. Why? Because, it is really against my principles to badmouth another person so, even if you laugh at me and tell the whole world that I am too weak for not being able to hurt them back, I won't do it.

If you consider strength as choosing my 'freedom of speech' over someone else well-being and being cold and unfeeling when inflicting pain on another..... then perhaps there is something wrong with you, not me.

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