Literature Review:
In today’s society it is so easy for someone to hide behind a black screen and comment horrific things on your social media, and this is simply not okay. Cyberbullying has been a huge problem since social media became popular. Anyone can talk about someone behind their back but it is another thing to publicly shame someone for the rest of their followers to see, let alone to see it for yourself. Sadly, internet trolling is common on social media because it is easier for a stranger to deliberately judge you without you knowing who they are. Internet trolls will provocate anyone maliciously to make them feel good about themselves and to get a rise out of you. With that being said, this online behavior can cause severe problems to the user they are being critical to. These major problems could result in things like suicide, depression, physical harm, and psychological effects.
The reason I chose this particular topic itself is because recently I have started to come popular on Tik Tok. I only have a handful of videos and my comment section is usually fairly nice, but there are a few comments that have been really hurtful. I started thinking about these comments daily and really started to question myself and that is when I realized - this is not okay. A couple days after my realization, Kylie Ross posted a video on her Instagram feed sharing her experience with internet trolls, and she specified that YouTube trolls have been the worst for her. Of course I know that social media platforms can be only an act for some influencers, but I genuinely believe that Kylie Ross means well and is a good person. Now it comes down to me trying to understand my main question which is; why is it so easy for Internet trolls to be masked cyberbullies?
Usually someone’s perception of a troll is a person with no profile picture and a random username. Social media trolls make their profiles this way to hide their identity so they can comment horrible things. For my approach, I am analyzing if each troll has a profile picture and/or an actual username. An actual username would mean if their username is something simple like a first and last name. Whereas not an actual username would be similar to to something like “user1245246” or “PinkPanther”. My approach is important because I am trying to point out a correlation between the users who are commenting critical comments. The theory I am testing is that the more critical the comment is, the user who commented the critical comment will have no profile picture and/or no actual username, or both. There is most likely a deeper connection to all the data I have gathered as to why internet trolls enjoy commenting vicious words. The relationship linking whether or not the trolls have a profile picture or an actual username is significant to answer my main question above, which was again; why is it so easy for Internet trolls to be masked cyberbullies? The importance of this particular topic means a lot to me personally because I have seen the way a few words have really effected people in my life, including myself. In today’s society trolling and cyberbullying is too common considering there are usually no consequences for their actions. Hopefully this approach could reach at least one person, if not all people, to be able to share the significance of trolling and cyberbullying and how society should no longer tolerate it.
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