Lisa Selin Davis Internet Trolls Summary

In the article “Internet Trolls” by Lisa Selin Davis, she talks about people who spread negativity on the internet. According to her article, people leave nasty comments on the internet because they feel like they are alone and can hide behind the computer. Also, they want to get a reaction out of people and gain attention, so they say harsh, hurtful comments. She believes people don’t think before they type. These “trolls” can be categorized into many different groups including: hackers, catfishers, and cyberbullies. First of all, hackers are people who use the internet to gain access to other people’s private information with a malicious intent. They will attack innocent people and take their information for many reasons. Davis says that their behavior is anonymous and unethical. Identity theft is a form of hacking where people steal important information such as social security numbers, identification numbers, and credit cards. They can …show more content…
These people use social media to pretend to be someone that they are not. In some cases they do this in order to date someone they feel is out of their league. Catfishing has become increasingly popular, they even made a hit TV show about it. In the show, the creator of the show and his partner try and see if the person online is who they say they are and usually they are not. Catfishers steal information and pictures from strangers or a friend they wish they could be and put it out there hoping to deceive a person into being with them. Davis says catfishers are suffering from the “disinhibition effect,” which is “the frequency of self-interested unethical behavior increases among anonymous people” (3). In other words, catfishers think just because they can’t see the person then they have a chance to trick that person and nobody would get hurt. Perhaps, they just don’t care if the other person gets hurt. The catfishers know they can’t get hurt because catfishers have a fake