Trolling has almost become a habit or we may call it, second nature by us all. It is difficult to have mobile in hand, reading a post and not to comment on it. But group trolling, deliberate trolling is a poisonous attitude. It needs a review. Dewall, a notable psychologist, observed that we are, indeed, social animals. We need to belong. As with other motivations, thwarting the need to belong intensifies it; satisfying the need reduces the motivation. Social media fulfills the need of belonging to. Isolated people find refuge in groups and adopt group tendencies which have evolved into troll farms. For people everywhere (no matter their sexual orientation), actual and hoped- for close relationships can dominate thinking and emotions. Finding a sup- portive person in whom we can confide, we feel accepted and prized. Fallin in love, we feel irrepressible joy. When relationships with partners, family, and friends are healthy, self-esteem—a barometer of our relationships—rides high (Denissen & others, 2008). Longing for acceptance and love, we spend billions on cosmetics, clothes, and diets. Even seemingly dismissive people relish being accepted (Carvallo & Gabriel, 2006).Groups help in promotion of negative feeling as well.
When circumstances provoke an individual’s aggressive reaction, the addition of group interaction will often amplify it.
Youths sharing antisocial tendencies and lacking close family bonds and expectations of academic success may
find social identity in a gang. Joblessness, hike is leading towards strengthening of social media Activism As group identity develops,conformity pressures and deindividuation increase (Staub,1996). Self-identity diminishes as members give themselves over to the group, often feeling a satisfying oneness with theothers. The frequent result is social contagion—group-fed arousal, disinhibition, and polarization.
Arnold Goldstein (1994), a gang expert, observed, until gang members marry out, age out, get a job, go to prison, or die, they hang out. They define their turf, display their colors, challenge rivals, and sometimes commit delinquent acts and fight over drugs, terri- tory, honor, women, or insults.
The twentieth-century massacres that claimed over 150 million lives were “not the sums of individual actions,” notes Robert Zajonc (2000). “Genocide is not the plural of homicide.” Massacres are social phenomena fed by “moral imperatives”—a collec- tive mentality (including images, rhetoric, and ideology) that mobilizes a group or a culture for extraordinary actions.
Experiments by Yoram Jaffe and Yoel Yinon (1983) confirm that groups can amplify aggressive tendencies. When Provoked, Groups are More Aggressive Than Individuals.
There are nonaggressive ways to express our feelings and to inform others how their behavior affects us. Across cultures, those who reframe accusatory “you” messages as “I” messages—“I feel angry about what you said,” or, “I get irritated when you leave your job halfway”—communicate their feelings in a way that better enables the other person to make a positive response (Kubany & others, 1995). We can be assertive without being aggressive.
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