Zooming Out, Focusing In

Over the course of this week, I feel that I am seeing the bigger picture of what’s really going on in being online and anonymous. At the beginning of this unit, we’ve studied “trolling” and how it has negatively affected the online community today. My first impressions on trolling made me feel cynical towards all form of rude online comments. I was disgusted by the inhumane behavior of “trolls” when they harassed Zelda Williams and Lindy West. At the time, I narrowly defined online trolling as spreading negativity and downgrading another’s work online. I didn’t appreciate the fact that people had the power to stir up anger and hate on the internet.

 However, as we read more articles on class concerning online speech conduct and anonymity, the scope of my views on trolling has widened. The articles from the New York Time’ room for debate gave me all sorts of perspectives on online speech – not trolling. Not every article focused on online trolling, or at least they didn’t directly classify hateful speech as trolling. Vyshali Manivannan, a Ph.D. candidate in Media Studies, argues that trolling is loosely defined and only used to generalize all forms of negative speech. Also Manivannan suggests that to tackle the problem of the variances in “trolling” it requires multiple approaches. This article stood out to me because it really made sense. In addition, my views on anonymity have also evolved in the process.

Now, I view trolling as a conglomerate of communication issues between people and groups of people. There is a wide pool of scenarios in which trolling differs, and the only way to fully understand the problem is to dive into the specific situation where the problem exists. Concerning trolling with anonymity, I intially didn’t have a concrete or at least good understanding of it. But now, I don’t think that there is a direct relationship between them. We can’t blame anonymity for the reason of trolling and we can’t blame trolling for the negativity of anonymity. There are some aspects of anonymity that are useful to us, however under specific circumstances misconduct online should be monitored.

After soaking in what each article points out, I am confident in writing this paper. Our ERW class intelligible arranged this unit. To get a better understanding of a situation or problem, you would have to go through a process. Initially, you encounter what the current conflict is, then after some time you get better understanding as you step back from the problem. This phase of reflection gives you the knowledge and information you need to tackle the issue. Similarly, after encountering trolling at first, then stepping away from it by reading other articles, I feel I’ve got a good idea on what trolling is. By zooming out, I was able to focus in on the issue.