Do we really need more means to spew hate and plant discord?
The rising number of users per day on social networking websites varying from Facebook, twitter, to blogs and fan pages indicates their continuosly expanding reach. This has given rise to a new tool of thought sharing and opinion generation – “TROLLS”. While scrolling down random news feeds on any social networking website we come across fun facts, postulates, meme, satires, all of which fall under the broad category of trolls. These trolls have become an instant hit with the young and old alike.
In internet slang TROLL is a) a message that someone leaves on the internet that is intended to annoy people or b) someone who leaves an intentionally annoying message on the internet, in order to get attention or cause trouble. Ummm… Whhyyy?? Yes, that is exactly the question to ask. Do we really need more means to spew hate and plant discord?
Examples of popular troll pages are RVCJ (Rajnikant v/s CID Jokes), the Sarcastic Indian, and life hacks. And these are some of the relatively harmless ones. With instant, provocative uploads on all that is happening around the globe, even stories which mainstream media fails to cover, troll pages have built a huge subscription and begun to enjoy the status of opinion makers and trend setters.
With not even a pretense at social responsibility, trolls have quickly crossed the line between annoying and, intrusive and insulting. A very good example of this is what happened to the Virat Kohli – Anushka Sharma couple after India lost the 2015 cricket world cup. The internet came alive with vindictive, hurtful jokes and meme that were supposed to be funny but were actually just in poor taste.
Before airing our POV perhaps we should ask ourselves whether we have a right to a POV on any random subject. Freedom of speech and the numerous means of exercising the same that we keep providing ourselves should be used with responsibility and care. Hurting a person, organization or community’s sentiments is never okay.
