Thursday, December 7, 2017
Are minorities a main target for trolls?
Fortunately, trolls aren't mainly targeting minorities, but that also makes it unfortunate since they can target anyone they please. With the advances of social media, people are very vocal about their opinions. People post about their favorite sports teams or about their favorite songs at the moment but these are based on opinions. Yes they are personal opinions but they may change over time. Nonetheless it is very frustrating to get comments like "that music is gay" or stuff like that. Now if opinions can change, how is it different to get trolled about something you can't change? That's where I draw the line between Trolling and cyberbullying. The article "Internet trolling: quarter of teenagers suffered online abuse last year" by Aisha Gani, shows us that minorities or people with disabilities receive online trolling all year round. This type of trolling carries more weight than making fun of your favorite songs or sports teams. Our favorite songs can change, but we can't change the color of our skin or the fact that we can see or not. Most of the online damage is caused from trolling (the annoying, ignorant comments) But what people fail to see is how cyberbullying is affecting minorities. Fortunately, the article also talks about how there is a growing number of people online who support those who have been verbally abused by cyberbullies. So if you were to come across a negative comment, try to comment something positive to balance it out.
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I really liked how you specified the difference between trolling and cyberbullying.I too agree that attacking someone based on something they can’t change is wrong.But something I find hard to agree with is how ,you said we should intervene when we see harsh comments.So we can try to balance out the negativity, but isn’t that making me just as vulnerable as the person that is being attacked? I would rather privately message the person that is being attacked,instead of giving the troll more reason to attack based off of my positive comments.
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