In 1847, Danish writer and philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote ‘Showing that they don’t care about me, or caring that I should know they don’t care about me, still denotes dependence… They show me respect precisely by showing me that they don’t respect me.’ This was true in the 19th century, and it is still true now. Human nature, as such has not changed. People bully someone they do not understand, or someone they unconsciously feel inferior to, in order to try and increase their own perception of themselves.
This comes through in a very interesting article I read here – http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/10/13/kierkegaard-diary-bullying-trolling-haters/
Some time ago, I too published an article on Internet Trolling and Online Bullying – which can be found here – http://www.eve.com.mt/2014/12/23/internet-trolls-mentally-unbalanced-or-just-plain-bullies/
I hadn’t yet read the article on Kirkegaard when I wrote my own – in fact I just read it this evening, yet I feel that the two taken together make perfect sense. In my article I mention psychologist John Suler on the concept of ‘Online Disinhibition’, that is that feeling of freedom from social norms some people feel when they are writing or criticising something online – in simple words, they think that their comments cannot be traced back to them since they are relatively ‘faceless’, and so they express things they would not say in real life. You could actually say that they are COWARDS.
Darkly Dreaming Moonsong 