A new study
from the University of Manitoba has shockingly claimed to have found
that the Internet trolls we all know or love so well may not be very
nice -- or particularly mentally healthy -- individuals in real life.
The study tried to explore whether or not Internet trolls fell into the
so called Dark Tetrad: Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and
deceive others), narcissism (egotism and self-obsession), psychopathy
(the lack of remorse and empathy), and sadism (pleasure in the suffering
of others). The study (mostly survey, really) claims to have found:
"... correlations, sometimes quite significant, between these traits and trolling behavior. What’s more, it also found a relationship between all Dark Tetrad traits (except for narcissism) and the overall time that an individual spent, per day, commenting on the Internet."
It's worth noting that the
survey found, by and large, that most people online are perfectly
reasonable and decent human beings. At the very least they're just quiet
lurkers:
"To be sure, only 5.6 percent of survey respondents actually specified that they enjoyed "trolling." By contrast, 41.3 percent of Internet users were “non-commenters,” meaning they didn’t like engaging online at all. So trolls are, as has often been suspected, a minority of online commenters, and an even smaller minority of overall Internet users."
The study appears to rely heavily on subjects pulled from Amazon's Mechanical Turk,
who may not be a good control representative of what constitutes normal
behavior, either online or off. The study also appears to be rather
heavily reliant on simply asking people if they liked to be jerks on
the Internet -- which if I were an Internet troll, I'm not sure I'd answer correctly. Reading their analysis and methodology,
it's not clear to me if the researchers did (or could) calculate how
anonymity can turn a relatively normal person into a blathering jackass
(as this classic Penny Arcade comic illustrates in deep scientific detail).
Is somebody necessarily a
sadist offline because anonymity turns them into a jerk when they're
online? Isn't it possible that people act worse online because the sense
of anonymity gives them the belief they're free from repercussion and
can therefore experiment with darker, but not necessarily dominant,
aspects of their personality they'd fear to explore offline? Wouldn't
that especially be true of children, who may express anger at their lack
of power through online rage, but develop into perfectly normal people
as they age?
You can dig through the full methodology yourself,
assuming you're smart enough, professor. Those shoes make you look fat.
I'd also like to point out that the Beatles sucked, Internet Explorer
is the vastly superior browser, the RIAA makes a lot of solid points
based on sound scientific data, the Comcast merger will help cure cancer
and save puppies, and my little sister is much better than you are at
this game, bro.
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