Trolling matters

If science indicates that free-play helps animals, children and adults destress and problem solve, why do corporatists and their platforms discourage it? Trolling is the ultimate definition of adult free-play: free-flowing, interactive, non-committal and above all else, fun! So I ask myself, why would governments, and their minions, bogeyman the term and dehumanise debate instigators to iNazi looking to gas millions of users.

There is little doubt the most amusing internet free-players are right-wing “trolls,” as they don’t hide their ideology just as they can’t hold back their quips. Creative one-liners ooze out of them like larva oozes out of a volcano. They elevate weighty debates. They stimulate powerful emotional responses. They make online interactions engaging, to the point that it becomes almost impossible not to respond, and the left’s case, to report. Either way, they hook you in and force a reaction.

The political and cultural sparks set off by free-players initiate many more things. The interactions sharpen minds, finetune arguments and influence culture. Information carried by internet voices is challenging the status quo of most topics which affect our daily live. From multiculturalism to history, from fashion to finance, from music to house buying, from feminism to diet, from politicians to vested interests. As users expand their knowledge and skills, their whispers carry through, influencing others as they exercise the power of critical thinking. The flow of information, and the constant human filtering, is teaching people to recognise strawmen, distractions, propaganda, manipulation and cultural engineering. It is also emboldening them to transfer the ideas and arguments they developed online into their real lives. And our lives are becoming richer for it. So, again, I ask why would the corporatists and our governments want to make politics and culture less engaging? To answer, because they don’t want to transfer their power on to the people.

For the first time in history, we, the people, hold the power to create a democracy that has never been seen before. The internet has already proven how power is transferred to its users, the election of Trump has proven it. Is now beginning to break down the stronghold of other institutions and organisations such as universities, which are forced to offer online degrees to remain competitive. Mainstream celebrities are being challenged with ecelebritites, who have larger followings. Newspapers, malls and mainstream music are slowly, but surely, dying and being internet alternatives are flourishing. We’re at the point that no amount of censorship or propaganda or weaponised terminology has the ability to stop this flow — we’re too far in and the tentacles of reason and power decentralisation are now too numerous. Hate-speech laws, censorship, de-platforming, demonization of free-speech is only working in making us more resilient. Hysterical reactions, genocidal messages, menses discharge masks, and the everyone-except-my-virtue- signaling are fascists, have become internet free-play laughter fodder. We have become critics, journalists, commentators, reporters, comedians and philosophers. We are replacing the fake media and all of the slop-suckers attached to them. It is only a matter of time that “the enemy of the people” shall be demoted to historical trash soon to be forgotten. Trolls, through intellectual play, have weaponised humanity.

Trolls are making politics great again, their wit and memes are the new Oscar Wilde play. The fire they ignite steadily grows to illuminate the importance of freedom of speech. We are moving into a new horizon based on reason and democracy and there’s no stopping it.

It is time.