Troll dissection: Why you gotta be so rude??

No matter how hard I try, I can never understand the psyche of trolls - and I mean those on the internet, not the ugly fierce ones hiding under bridges in Norwegian fairy tales.

One of my first troll attacks was when a friend had posted a photo of us on a night out. Someone on her blog commented "Oh dear, that's some scary looking eyeshadow" about my choice of eye makeup. I replied, "If you don't have anything nice to say, then it's better to keep it to yourself." The blog owner actually responded chastising me, "Well, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion."

WOW. To this day I still haven't figured out which is the bigger troll between the two.

And then, i discovered that they are everywhere. Well, anywhere that there are humans, you are likely to encounter one. They seem to be attracted to crowds, pretending to blend in initially as a normal human being, and strike when the opportunity presents itself. o_O

I used to think they were just very unhappy people having perpetual bad days who happen to trawl the net to distract themselves from their misery, only to get incensed by people who appear to lead happy cheerful lives, sharing some bits of their joy online. It gives them some perverse relief from their nasty mood to spread some of their negativity, and take away some of the joy from the happy people.

And then I realised that there are actually entire communities of them who seem to dedicate the majority of their hours obsessed with the mission of stalking their targets' every move, then dissect it with glee amongst their troll community, delighting in conjectures and tearing apart every seemingly positive image shared.

Seriously?

Why do you care so much? How do you presume to deduce all these fantastical delusions of a person's character simply based on a snippet of their lives that they intentionally chose to put on their social media account? Why do you feel like you have the right to cast stones of judgment and diss how they curate their content? How do you get so consumed by a person whom you don't know in real life?

Most importantly, why are you so rude? Saying "no offense" doesn't give you the license to say something that's in bad spirit, because when you give that disclaimer, you must already know that whatever is coming out of your mouth next is offensive. Don't feign good intentions, because nobody needs to know what you think of their fashion sense, or makeup look, or caption. It's their space, their life, their choice. They probably truly don't give a damn about what you think.

I used to get annoyed by the sightings of trolls, but these days, I just feel sad for them. What a pathetic and wasteful existence they lead, stuck in a vicious cycle of negativity.