Science Speaks Up And Explains Why People Troll On The Internet
While many people do enjoy chatting and debating issues online, approximately 5.6% of individuals self identify as trolls. Scientists decide to study a group of 1200 internet users to understand these trolls in particular and found a myriad of something called "dark traits". Specifically, online trolls were found to display high levels of psychopathy, narcissism, and most specifically sadism; that is, people who enjoy the pain of others.
Now, most people tend to avoid inflicting pain on others, and if we do, we experience guilt or remorse. But for sadists, cruelty can be exciting abnd pleasurable. These people are not serial killers or bad people, but they get an emotional reward when causing or observing of others.
Internet trolls show very high levels as sadism and have fun distressing others by being argumentative and disruptive. The unfortunate part is that trolls not only comment more but receive more replies than the average user, suggesting they are quite successful at luring other in. So, the next time you're being trolled, just remember, they want to disrupt you they feed of your happiness. Just ignore them and you're likely to diminish their effort.
