During the late 00s and early 10s, I used to frequent Gaia Online. It was a forum site where people dressed their little avatars in fancy clothes, played the games for Gaia Gold, and eventually went through the inevitable microtransaction shift that fucked up the in-game economy forever.

But, I remember at one point, there was a grim time in the General Discussion section of the forums. Affectionately called “The GD,” it was a forum for exactly what was advertised; discussions for non-serious topics about stuff. And like any other forum ever, you would get trolls and idiots posting stuff that broke the terms of service in some way. Whether or not the individuals got permanently banned within a reasonable timeframe was inconsistent, but the egregious threads themselves would be usually be gone in a few minutes.

One month, a bunch of 4channers had popped into The GD to do the thing they do best: ruin everything for everyone by posting horrible things. Mutilated animals, murdered corpses, Tub Girl, you name it. Posts with innocuous titles about what your superpower would be or a “You Laugh, You Lose” thread would lead you to click, and then you’d be met with something horrifying. This happened on and off for days, then eventually petered out. 

Trolling is a common occurrence, and has been around since the first person ever randomly insulted a stranger. On some occasions it IS funny, like the Habbo Hotel pool incident of 2006 or the “Hitler Did Nothing Wrong” Mountain Dew flavor vote. But, situations like the GD invasion make me wonder…why would you go to THAT length? The primary audience for Gaia Online was teenagers and young adults. What does Neckbeard Cheetofingers get out of outright traumatizing them? He can’t even see the people responding. He just sees a few responses of “wtf” and “that’s awful,” before the thread gets nuked by moderators and his account gets banned.

At its core, trolling is done for attention. A person responding negatively to a hateful comment fuels the troll’s ego. Trolls will obsessively refresh a page to see if someone took the bait and got mad over what they posted. They’ll make dozens of alternate accounts to fall back on, just in case one is banned. They’ll even pick out their favorite victims and harass them until they delete their account or kill themselves, then move on to the next one.

To me, it just seems like too much effort just to make someone hate you. Instead of doing things like investing money, cleaning your room, or sucking a dick, you’re just upsetting teenagers. That’s your part-time job…or your full-time job, depending on the circumstance. You’re dedicating so much effort and time into getting someone you don’t know to cry or curse or kill themselves…because they’re cringy? Because you’re a sadist? Because you love when people hate you, since it reinforces the idea that you’re fundamentally hateable and justify your unwillingness to fix your terrible personality?

I don’t know. The people who troll, especially those who go to such lengths as to traumatize someone, would never admit the real reason unless they felt there was something to gain from it. While I get that people find that power addicting, thus why they keep doing it knowing that it’s wrong, it’s too much effort to be put into something that has no real reward besides feeling powerful for a few minutes.

I wonder if the trolls who posted all those animal and human corpses look back fondly on what they did. If they’re sitting somewhere nice and comfortable, thinking, “Ah…I sure owned those shitty teenagers. Good times.” I’m sure some of them do, but I’d like to think that a good number of them look back on what they did and feel like shit. As they should.