This article was written by Asa Zaretsky, class of 2018.
We’ve all been in the situation where we’re are sitting next to someone who constantly tries to rile his or her fellow students with crazy and offensive comments. In the wake of these statements, outrage, sighs and even laughter can be heard. Sometimes he or she even tries to agitate teachers. These people are commonly known as trolls.
These are people who enjoy irritating people and often engage in a number of methods to do so. They proclaim senseless statements merely for the reaction. Trolls often live off of the attention granted to them by their words, so in order to gain more and more attention, trolls adopt an increasingly outrageous attitude and crazier antics. Seldom a day goes by without these people interjecting and causing a major disruption in the class. While a troll might be funny at first, eventually he or she gets annoying, and many students in the class get tired of this person.
A troll is often also very contrarian, and no matter what the common belief or consensus is on a particular issue or topic, he or she will take an extreme stance against it. This contrarianism is also meant to turn heads and attract attention, yet many people have fallen into the trap of arguing with trolls who don’t really care about the topic,which only serves to fulfill the troll’s goal of receiving attention.
Dealing with a troll effectively is tough, and it can be hard not to engage and not give him or her what he or she wants. The ideal strategy then, is fairly simple. After identifying someone as a troll, it is best to ignore him or her. Without any attention from a particular person or group after multiple attempts at gaining attention, the trolls will look elsewhere. Sadly, it seems as though most people do not ignore trolls but instead engage with them and “feed” them with the attention that they crave. This only makes them “hungry” for more attention. You can’t argue with these people-the only way to make them go away is to ignore them.
