Disproportionate amount of bad online behaviour stems from psychological issues

It makes me want to talk about how the concept of the troll has evolved from something specific to something very general. I glanced through the article and none of the behaviors it listed are what I'd consider troll behaviors. They're just the patterns of mild mental illness.

Trolls, in my old-man's definition, are almost a type of hunter, looking to bait and confuse their victims.

Trolls wouldn't be the hoards suffering from "sanctimony, emotional aridity and ideological orthodoxy", and exhibiting BPD/DID behaviors. Trolls would be the people trying to provoke the above.

I think there is simple statistical/neurological explanation.

Part 1:

We are exposed to much more information and interaction that we have evolved for. Our brains have very biased/impractical approach to understanding the world: if you hear about something happening many times in large number then it automatically gives large weight to it and treats it as normal/prevalent/dangerous etc.

This is also what somebody might mean when they say "a lie repeated frequently enough becomes truth". That's how our brains are built.

Part 2:

We tend to notice things that are out of ordinary more than normal. Nobody spends time revisiting "normal" comments, but people will notice and spend their focus disproportionately more on mean behavior.

Part 3:

Internet amplifies things, but mostly things we focus on. This means an extremely mean comment will tend to be amplified more and get more visibility than a perfectly normal comment.

Part 4:

Even if 1 percent of 1 percent of people write an extremely mean comment just once that is still deluge of meanness that your biased brain will understand as "mean" being frequent behavior on the internet, something that is done by many people and probably frequently.

Then again, depending on the psychological issues it doesn't matter how many negative indicators there are that you are the problem. Some people just seem unable to accept they have issues, or unable to correctly process that people's reaction to them is in fact negative.

There's just such a wide range of things here.

Given the additional stresses and oppresive social experiences trans people face and are outspoken about, this is entirely unsurprising.