The term trolling refers to individuals who spend time online purposefully making hateful statements, starting conflict and attempting to destroy products, brands or personality.

By Cassy van Eeden

Since online trolling is almost unavoidable, it is important to know how to deal with the situation when it arises.

How do I identify a troll?

Before deciding how to react to trolling, it is important to understand how these individuals operate and what they are attempting to achieve. To do this, you need to first be able to identify a troll.

Tech-writer Saikat Basu says that trolls can be identified by the provocative and confrontational language that they use; they hide behind a fake or fictitious online identity that leads to dead ends; they hardly ever stick to the topic; and they often make desperate efforts to make themselves liked.

How do I react?

How you react to these trolls depends on the nature of their trolling, the platform you are using and the way in which you usually interact with others online.

There are generally two ways of dealing with an online troll: either you avoid them or you respond to them.

How do I avoid a troll?

Editor-in-chief of Lifehacker, Whitson Gordon, says, “Avoidance is and has always been the best course of action.”

“The majority of trolls thrive on the confrontation – after all, their singular going is to get attention – so the more you ignore them the better,” he explains.

“Don’t respond to them, not even to call them out as a troll, and they’ll go away. Even a simple comment like ‘please stop’ or ‘go away, troll’ can bring attention to their comments.”

How do I respond to trolls?

If you feel strongly enough about responding to the troll, Gordon recommends attempting to fizzle out the argument or even kill them with kindness.

Basu says, “If you do get on a one-on-one with someone you suspect to be a troll, keep your remarks to an absolute minimum. State your facts and move on. Put the ball in their court.”

Software developer Shlomi Fish outlines two ways you can respond to trolls: “Ask him what he means; interrogate him: ‘Why do you feel that Python is so bad? What do you find wrong with it?’” or you can “agree with him – but use softer language: ‘Yes, Perl is a nice language, and I agree that Python has its downsides. It’s okay to prefer Perl’.”

“This will make the troll lose steam and help you find a common ground,” adds Fish.

What can I do to stop trolls?

Gordon suggests downvoting the troll’s comments or blocking them, if this is a possibility on the platform you are using.

He adds that there are several web browser extensions that can actually filter through comments sections and hide comments based on certain criteria.

David Duncan, chief marketing officer for Webroot says, “Alert the site moderator if there is one, but even on unmediated sites there is usually a ‘report abuse’ feature.”

Basu points out that: “You can use blacklists and whitelists to separate the bad from the good. IP addresses can be tracked and persistent attacks from an IP or a range of IPs can be effectively blocked.”

Have you ever dealt with an online troll? What was your experience and what advice could you share? Let us know in the comments below.