more on the psychology of trolls

The door flings open. In walks a peculiar gent. Taking a large step he trips over his foot. The sudden loss of balance causes him to slam his head against the wall. Unpreturbed, he sits down, takes off his shoe, and proceeds to put his foot in his mouth.

Those who stand around are bemused. "Surely he cannot have intended to do that?" they remark among themselves.

I used to think that way: It must be an error. Lack of judgement due to lack of education must have caused the troll his untold pain. His clumsy feet are due to lack of training as to how to walk.

I now think differently, that this clumsy effect is exactly what the sad fellow wants. It's not that lack of education has no role to play in producing the clumsiness. Rather, he accustomisation to a state of entitlement renders him passive in terms of of the world. He says, "the world owes me a positive evaluation, without my having to work for it." Compounding his idiocy, rather than understanding that many people's judgements about him in the past might have been in error, he passively accepts that their negative evaluations constitute REALITY.

The troll, in his passivity towards the world, has internalised others interpretations of him as negative self-esteem.

But the troll -- like Frankenstein's unfortunate monster -- still has hunger and desires. What is he to do? He cannot petition that a bride be made for him. But he can search for one with the same outlook as himself.

For this reason, the troll patrols the face of the Internet. Once on the site of some potential love interest, he seeks to employ the strategies that will enable him to recognise a fellow soul with equally poor self esteem. The longer the interlocutor tolerates him, the more the troll brightens. Since it is evidence of very poor self esteem to tolerate a troll, he feels he might just have discovered the bride of Frankenstein -- someone who will tolerate him for who society thinks he is.

The troll's strategy of filtering out those who have positive self esteem in order to latch onto someone with low self-esteem is a logical one. His mating cry is emitted in the unsavoury and clumsy antics he performs when he walks in the door.