One of our blog readers tipped us off to this article published today in Slate that analyzes the personality traits of people who engage in online trolling:
We already knew this, didn’t we?
Their findings were rather disturbing:
The problem is, how do websites deal with this? How do they stop online trolls from hurting other people? It’s a tough question. We leave our comments open for reader thoughts.
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I think that making it illegal to post fake names and alias’ should be just as illegal online as it is in real life. Why should being on the internet allow you the opportunity to be anonymous when in real life your not. If we eliminate the anonymity then these people who feel their statements are not impacting people well see that they are and than having to face up to it as themselves and not just some gravatar named devilchild that these voices online belong to real actual people with real actual feelings. Than maybe they can be held accountable. It is very hard to assign blame to a person if that person doesn’t really exist.
Our thoughts exactly!
Until we remove anonymity from the public equation, nothing will improve. The mask is what allows these creatures to do what they do. As with all serial killers (and that’s what these people are — serial sanity killers), they are actually cowards who hide behind their vicious facades.