Why are trolls online so mean?

[unsunghero]

Originally Posted by Sadre Spinegnawer [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

But I would go one step further and say, the nature of the activity itself likely creates transient psychotic events in otherwise normal people.

Temporary psychotic episodes that can be quite severe due to the trio of bad factors (anonymity, disinhibition, dissociation) at play, can get pretty intense in the internets era. And at scale!

Wellllll, "disassociation" probably has a different meaning in a clinical setting. This is different than roleplaying a character in a video game, or even pretending to be that character in real life because you find it fun or comforting

ACTUAL disassociation is extremely rare. Despite kids wanting to be trendy by faking mental illness like multiple personality disorder on Tik Tok, it is rare IRL to the point of some psychiatrists basically claiming D.I.D doesn't even exist. The only time you see it is as some type of trauma response from a severely traumatized individual. We're talking a kid who was molested or abused severely for a large portion of their childhood kind of trauma. There's been extremely rare case studies of those people "disassociating" to a different personality as a defense mechanism of their brain. This is somewhat similar to a soldier with PTSD disassociating to being back in the war, which once again, from working with tons of veterans, is extremely rare to the point of ALMOST never actually occurring anywhere. Although I did read a true life crime case of a vet with PTSD who apparently disassociated that he was back in a warzone and killed his neighbors randomly

This is also different than "when I get really angry or have another powerful negative emotion I just black out". That's not true disassociation in the clinical sense. That just means that the frontal lobe of the brain which is doing the reasoning isn't as active in that moment. But this is different than actual diassociation


And could a video game cause a psychotic break? No. Once again it's extremely rare to have a sudden psychotic break past the age of onset of a psychotic disorder (for women its around 18-20ish, for men it's around 22-24ish). The only reason to have a psychotic break past that point is almost always going to be due to a chemical influence, like taking a strong psychoactive drug. Playing a video game just can't fuck with brain chemicals to make someone psychotic. The worst that playing a video game can do is cause addiction, which would result in psychological withdrawal symptoms such as depression, irritability, insomnia, etc. But not psychosis