Trolling Vs Cyberbullying

For a while now I've been reading articles that use the term 'trolling' to describe an act of cyber bullying. But are they actually the same?

My experience has been that a troll is someone who joins a forum or chat room just to stir up trouble and annoy people by saying deliberately inflammatory things.

Whereas a cyber bully is someone who targets a specific individual over long periods of time and makes attacks on their personal lives in order to make them feel bad about themselves.

Do you agree or is trolling just another form of cyber bullying?

You could make an argument theyre related, but they are very different. TroIIing is a respected art that takes a lot of skill. Bullying requires little to no skill and is very disrespectful. A troIIs main goal is to create an illusion of chaos to test fear. TroIIing actually defeats fear.

Its the rubber ducky theory, if i tell everyone you take a bath with a rubber ducky...sure, a bunch of people will believe me at first, but sooner or later, ill have to start posting pics of you in the bath with the rubber ducky to take it to the next level.

Once that fear of it being true fades away, society ascends to the next level of freedom. TroIIing = freedom. Free the troIIs!

...what?

@Starshine_M2A2: Just an example on how troIIing helps defeat fear.

Trolling is generally regarding as online pranks.

While Cyber bullying is in the name simply bullying.

no and lol at cyber bullying.. you can block people from pretty much anything on the internet

Neither things are real, they're simply terms used to excuse people who don't handle things well and want to have a set fall guy in place.

Trolling is a non issue. Unless someone is going out of their way to make sure that the conversations cannot happen (such as spamming a board to not allow words in edgewise) they're harmless.

Cyber bullying isn't a thing at all. Words do not hurt people, period.

Now if someone is giving out phone numbers or addresses or calling police raids that's different.

No one has ever been hurt by someone calling them any word we have in the dictionary.

I told my friend that just had a kid. If your kid ever comes home and says someone is bullying it because they called it a bad name you smack that child and ask it if the bad word made them feel like that. They'll catch on really quick.

I think a lot of this has to do with so many of these touchy feely people saying you can't hit your kids anymore. Children have grown up not knowing what actually means to be hurt.

Adversity to them means someone says something different than you.

So you believe that teaching kids at an early age that violence is the solution to problems will make them valuable members of our society?

I think neither term has a clear definition in the eyes of the public which makes the situation pretty murky at times. That being said your definitions are pretty good in my view.

VERYrarely do I agree with @Jaysonguy but I concur with the overall sentiment of this post.

I thought bullying had a pretty good definition already. Adding cyber to the name would only imply where it takes place.

Indeed. Other than the "smack the kid" part. Words can only hurt if you let them hurt. Teaching kids that it's okay to get upset when someone makes fun of you is just setting them up for failure in adulthood. If they can't stand up for themselves or what they believe in, they won't endeavour to go anywhere or do anything with their life.

As someone who has been the "victim" of what some might classify as cyberbullying. (Verbal abuse, attempts of character assassination, slander, attempts to spread misinformation, stalking, ect). I agree with this. Words are little more than words, and they are not hurting me physically, and if you actually let them hurt you, either they are true and they hit a nerve... or you are incredibly insecure, probably both.

I was the victim of real-life bullying in elementary school. As soon as I stopped letting it affect me, I became much less troubled by it. It will only ever "hurt" someone if they let it. And most bullies tend to have massive insecurities about themselves which is why they feel the need to lash out and hurt others.

Both are Bad

I think that trolling and cyberbullying as with all behaviors should be thought in terms of their morality. The question could be asked: Are trolling or cyberbullying bad for communities? Another could be asked: Are they good? If personal answers for these questions are not equally similar, then the individual person answering should probably reevaluate their ethical principles and moral judgments because they should be the same. I think this because of my view that no thought or action is neutral. They are either for good or for ill. This is in disagreement with the proposal that moral relativism is the most likely state of reality.

The argument that emotional abuse, which is what trolling and cyberbullying are, is not real harm is probably incorrect as that can lead to depression, a serious medical condition.

God forbid, if both were one and the same, I'd be in jail by now.

Trolling is a way of life. Anyone who disagrees is probably sad af irl. Cyber Bullying, on the other hand, is a matter of logging out or turning off your screen, in most cases. There are very few cases where actual bullying is happening.

Trolling is an art, always has been ever since the dawn of the internet. Cyberbully is just a lousy term that effects the weak minded if you let Cyberbully get the better of you. Just like Jaysonguy put it in a very good way, actions speak louder then words and by that, I mean it's only words, and words cannot hurt you, if your strong -wielded person, Cyberbully will never win. Trolling is just to get a rise out of the person and it's nothing but pranks.

I admit, I do troll Sony fanboys to a certain degree but that's just mainly for fun and I rarely do it now.

I was a victim of bullying in elementary and middle school.

It only ever really became a problem in PE though, or when it involved physical violence or destruction of my property (including glasses). Where it outright affected my ability to do the tasks (I cant play the game when I am used as a human shield). Otherwise, I didnt really care for what the bottom of the barrel thought of me. Their insults carried no value to me. While I was getting honors, those ogres were getting F's.

Wrong. Words make people butthurt and can get you killed...words has got people killed, lots of people, read the news once in a while. Let me take you the ghetto and have you say some "words" to some friendly locals and we'll see if you make it out alive or not. Look, you can pretty much say anything negative to any particular stranger and either receive a negative response or get your ass kicked, shot..etc. You may even insight someone to stalk you or physically bully you from there on out...it happens.

Trolling often gets some people angry which yields a negative response. Those people say they aren't angry but they are or otherwise you wouldn't get much of a negative response but rather perhaps an opposing response challenging the infrastructure of your troll but chances are someone out there is going to get butt hurt over it

You just supported my argument.

Words do not hurt, it's people's inability to deal with it that hurts people. The more skills they they lack the worse it is.

Now you bring up the ghetto. Considering statistically that a good portion of those people come from single parent households where that parent is out working and unable to raise the kids correctly they are a perfect sample of children that are not taught correctly that words do not hurt people. Because our public school system has now been taken over by people that think saying a word can hurt someone and have things like bully counseling they can't even fill in partly for the absentee parent and teach even the most basic ability.

@Starshine_M2A2: Trolling is just someone wasting his time. Cyber bullying is more in the lines of herassment. Cyber bullying is worse. Never heard anyone kill themselves because someone was trolling them.

Remember guys cyberbullying can only be done by children and teens. My college prof for my cyber-psychology class has stated this. Adults cannot be a cyberbully, so that is a key difference! (Yes he did state this, and yes I am being sarcastic)

A troll is like that annoying guy at school who's looking for attention.

A cyberbully is, well, a bully.

lol

So ignorant.

Just because one can "turn off their screen" doesn't mean that it somehow stops being bullying.

It's like saying throwing penguins off a plane doesn't hurt them, it's their inability to fly that hurts the penguins.

It's scientifically known that psychological effects have profound physiological effects, sometimes akin to physical pain.

How does Grief cause physical pain?

Also, refer to PTSD.

I'm hoping a psych major comes to this thread and enlightens us all.

lol
**** you are a tool
...I mean troll
Typo

What exactly is cyber bullying? Is it posting hateful and defamatory things about a specific person? Because, in my book, that's just bullying but using the net. If it's one anonymous user picking on another anonymous user than that's more laughable.

trolling on the other hand is a beautiful art form. A type of expression and art.

I guess trolling can involve or lead to cyber bullying but not necessarily all the time. I would consider cyber bullying to be more serious in nature and something that can lead to much more damaging results. I think that both should be things that we try to prevent.

As with all joking, pranking, poking fun at others... There's a limit. If you've exceeded that limit your jokes become offensive or dangerous, your persecution of a target becomes harassment and your actions become bullying. Personally I think that limit is where the well-being of the trollee/prankee, or even their perceived well-being, is put at risk. This can be physical safety, emotional stability, virtual security in the case of private information and the internet...

However there is an area, as with all lines and limits, where it's hard to tell what's enough and what's too much, so it's understandable that someone might confuse trolling and cyberbullying at times, just like it's understandable that one might be bullying another person without being aware of it. Your definitions are good, TC, or at least I'd say so. They aren't the same, of course, but it is important to know how and why they are different, as opposed to just loling the issue away.

P.S. I doubt any of you users here on OT need or care for this reminder, but anyways: if you feel like you're being harassed by another user, feel uncomfortable with their trolling/jokes or see interactions between two other users you suspect might fall under harassment, please don't hesitate to reach out to the mod team, or any mod in particular you feel comfortable with. We do take the issue seriously, as we do the intimacy of private messages between mods and users; we don't want users shutting up and keeping any signs of harassment to themselves, regardless of whether they're the targets or not.

This is such a bullshit line of reasoning. Sure they can not use the internet to avoid it, but then they wouldn't be able to use the internet... You're saying that it's right for someone to be denied something because others are harassing them so badly they don't want to us it? That sounds like a real problem to me.

I was poking at those cases where X disagreed with Y and called him out on his bullcrap and Y said, 'Stop bullying me'. There are actual cases of bullying and then there are perceived cases of bullying. I was mentioning the latter.

I find trolling to generally be done in jest, with not really any intent to harm, more to infuriate. I wager that, if any relation is to be made, trolling might result in the troll being bullied.

Bullying is tactless and done to harm. While I don't really think cyberbullying is a big deal, there are people out that post embarrassing pictures and so forth, but to call that bullying demeans the nature of the actual crime being commited; harassment, verbal assault, and so forth. But going online and making fun of someone, I dare say that is not really cyberbullying.

Bullying occurs on the playground and in the physical realm, I really do not like this trend of people making examples out of "cyberbullying".

And can we just stop tacking on the "cyber" prefix, it's freaking lame and dated and reminds me of crappy 90s hacker movies.

Trolling is an art (or used to be one).

That system where the most popular comments are shown first is handy in battling cyber bullies and trolling. A few thumbs down and the comment in question dissapears out of sight out of mind. AI can soon make the decision of what is socially acceptable for us. It can be programmed to pickup cyber bullying by a word search and delete any offensive posts.

True, trolling is not an issue. As most people said here, it is an "art". It is mostly present in friends fooling around; it's like a way of bonding.

Cyber-bullying is a thing. It causes suicide, depression, et cetera to the bullied. I agree that what ever happens to the bullied is because of how he/she reacts toward the action. I get the whole "words don't hurt" thing but with all due respect, I think you're being too narrow-minded or too open-minded. Why did bullying even start? Because of words. Yes, it is not because of the bullies that their victims kill or try to kill themselves, or why they fall into depression. But isn't it the cause of a reckless mouth? A misuse of the freedom of speech? One way or another, the damage dealt by the bully to the bullied is because of the bullied. I hope you get my point.

I'm not against parents not hitting their child. But hitting them just because of what you said is inappropriate. Was it their fault that they were bullied? A parent should only hit their child if the child does something that he/she shouldn't be doing. They shouldn't be hit because they're weak. It is for the mature and strong to take care of the weak and mold them to be strong, and it should be through words; a parent must console rather than increasing the pain that the child already feels.

Hitting a child isn't the only way to grow a child who is not touchy and very sensitive, especially if the cause was because he/she was bullied.

Now to the main topic, no, in my opinion they are not the same. And like @mrbojangles25 said, trolling is more on infuriating/annoying while bullying is done to harm.

I'm going to cyberbully all of you. E-wedgie applied. Take that. Epunch to the head. Ekick to the shins.

What if the person being potentially harassed doesnt mind it?

A certain user, has thrown me a lot of "abuse" in the past few years, including slander and character assassination. But at the same time, I am unbothered with it, believing that those actions hurts his own reputation more hurts mine, and I believe he should have the right to do it.

@Maroxad: if you're okay with it and don't feel the need to report it then that's great, honestly. With any type of bullying it's obviously always better if there is none, however if there is and the target has the mental fortitude to withstand it or be totally unaffected by it then all the better for them.

All I meant by my previous post was that users can come to the mods if they feel like they need to. Nothing more.

I think you're a natural born troll. You don't mean to or even try to troll. You just are.

Anyway, there is a lot wrong with this post, mainly in part due to your ignorance and arrogance. You exude an attitude of "I'm tough, so everyone else should be tough like me." The truth is, we can't all be strong. Words DO get to us, and if you say you've never been hurt by something someone's said, you're either lying or lying to yourself. Are you closed off to the world? Have you never heard of someone committing suicide because they were a victim of cyber bullying? You also do realize that cyber bullying is more than just being called names, right? It's rumor mongering and character assassination and very vile shit that's usually spread by people you know in real life. If you get bullied at school, you can just avoid that part of school the next day, but if you get cyber bullied by someone who, say, has a not so flattering picture of yourself, then the next day it's on everyone's phones and everyone's Facebooks and Twitters. There is no escaping that. Cyber bullying for many people isn't so easily warded off by logging out, as some people here are saying, because again, it's usually done by people you know in real life.

"No one has ever been hurt by someone calling them any word we have in the dictionary."

If you mean physically, you're correct. But you do know there is something called psychological abuse, right? So I hope that you don't think you're making some kind of point here by being literal. Your parenting ability is also in question, because you'd rather strike a child who comes to you with a problem instead of offering them proper guidance. I think you have a limited understanding when it comes to being hurt physically and emotionally. You're right, children nowadays may not know what it means to actually be hurt, physically, (since spanking is going away) but that has little to no bearing with being hurt mentally.

Trolling can be abit of fun - but fellows who do stuff like upload dead pictures and send hate messages to grieving families on the internet and what not are probably not right in the head - more deserving of pity than hate and it's not exactly the sort of action a happy person would do.

@Starshine_M2A2: Posting a smart ass reply to someone isn't bullying. How would you function in reality if you cried anytime someone gave you a come back that made you feel silly. Constantly bothering someone over a long period of time would constitute bullying.

I'll give you an example since I've been the target in another game in the past. It didn't really bother me to be honest I was actually astonished that people were so gullible & quick to jump on the bandwagon.

In the game Dark Ages of Camelot I often disagreed with a particular player on the opposing realm. We trash talked back and forth daily on the forums primarily because this guy thought he was gods gift to DAOC. So I took it upon myself to target him all the time in game and post pics of taking him down. This usually followed in the kid claiming it wasn't him, he wasn't playing etc.

After awhile I grew bored of DAOC and quit for around a year to try other MMO's. Then I returned. I was surprised after a year the aforementioned kid had been so traumatized by my previous trash talking he started accusing other anon posters on the forums (I hadn't used in over a year) as being me.

I was really curious at this point having never witnessed suck delusion before. People in game actually believed I was this anon poster and I'd ask why... didn't matter I was. So I did my own investigation and began looking up all the anon posters... posts. This person knew a great deal about the guy, details about personal life and guild more then anything I knew. I went back and back until I found it.

One day the guy I trash talked randomly posted, "This anon poster guy sounds like (me his previous trash talker) it has to be him."

That was it lol. I found this extremely amusing. Based on that sentence all his buddies immediately assumed that was the case. The anon poster was banned yet I continued posting & they'd piss and moan to mods. Who informed them sorry kids they two have different IP's from different parts of the world.

Nope. It was fake, I was the guy. This went on for awhile. They'd randomly send me messages with the anon posters name. I always laughed because it disturbed me how people jumped on the bandwagon so quickly. Even people I never met before. All this time I just kept playing with my guild and it seriously bothered these people that I wasn't affected in the least. Maybe because I was an adult at the time and had a life I found the entire thing amusing.

In the long run it turned out the anon poster was someone in their own guild who despised them. This came out later when the guy got access to their accounts and stripped them of all items and deleted their characters.

I posted, "Karma."

@Jaysonguy: "No one has ever been hurt by someone calling them any word we have in the dictionary".

The idea that words cant hurt people is stupid. There's a different between physical and emotional pain/hurt obviously one cannot be physically hurt by a word. You only have to look at the existence of a word like propoganda and its meaning to start to understand that communication can be used to alter the way people think, alter the way people think and that could lead to any desired result. Be that pain or something entirely different.

To suggest that a child cant be hurt by words is just stupid. I can almost imagine your child being bullied and called horrific names only to come home and be hit by you in an effort to teach him some sort of backwards lesson about physical pain being the only thing to worry about.

I would say in my day to day life physical harm is substantially lower on my "list of things I give a shit about" than dealing with what other human being have the potential to make me feel with words.

Similar. Though, instead of acting like this conversation even needs to happen, maybe people should just finally realize that the internet is nothing more than a vacuum of nonsense and jizz, and anyone who puts emotional stock into a fucking circus is a fool.