Trolling: Breaking Rules, Poking Fun, or Just Outright Harassment?
“I am not reading all of that, but fuck Chu May Paing. What a fraud.” I didn’t see the comment on Facebook when it was first posted. I only found out a day after, through a friend of mine who shared a screenshot of the comment with me over a direct message. I will refer to the troll by a generic pseudonym of “John.” As ballsy of a troll as he was to leave such an inflammatory comment about me using his full real name, John was still not brave enough to leave it directly under one of my posts; he had left it under someone else’s post who mentioned my writing. I recognized John’s name right away when I saw the screenshot. John is a cishet white man in his late 30s or early 40s doing a PhD in anthropology with a focus on my home country Burma at an institution located on the Pacific Coast of the United States. As a frequent writer of irritating comments on Burmese users’ posts that create unnecessary disruptions in online discussions of Burma, John is notorious as an annoying online troll. He might be better known as a troll than a “scholar.” The Internet is John’s playground. Burmese people are his target. And trolling on Facebook seems to be how he soothes his boredom. (read more...)
