re: What makes one want to 'troll' on the Internet

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I imagine my age could make it more foreign to me as well.

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The pace of technological change has to be bewildering for many people of middle age or older. The resulting social changes are not subtle either.

In just one generation, American society has changed radically. Traditional family structure has been de-emphasized, globalization is a reality, politics is severely polarized, 40% of children are born outside of marriage, 60% of marriages end in divorce, and the American Dream has become more of a reverie.

The amount of information we have to process daily is incredible. We have to develop defensive filters to avoid being overwhelmed. This may be the biggest problem we have in the second decade of the 21st century.

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The comment section of that article is interesting.

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Wow, the tenth comment is awesome. Here are some excerpts:

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I troll because my life sucks.

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So I go online and I make others sad, upset and angry. It's all I have and I love it. I used to be such a moral person, and the thought of trolling made me shudder. Now I am horrible.I get a lot of joy torturing and abusing people. I don't know how much it hurts them or not and I don't care.

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So us losers do this. I do uncountable nasty things. I have made people cry and I know I encourage self harm in some. I don't care. This is life and I have not much. I recently got diagnosed a few medical conditions too.

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Am I evil? probably. But I feel life and society cohearsed me into this. I know others online like this too. But guess what we are important. We make people feel special and victimized and thus they feel morally just. We are the dark underbelly and we just don't care. And hopefully we do more and more damage. if I was smart enough i would hack and delete and damage as much as I could.

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Dude laid it on the line. I think he probably represents a lot of people who troll.