Why are people on message boards so NASTY?

I often have wondered what motivates a troll. In my case, I actually think it was jealousy. This one woman took a severe disliking to me, and this led to a kind of obsession on her part. She ended up following me from board to board and would only respond to my posts. The responses had nothing to do with the subject at hand; instead, she'd write, "well, that's because you're stupid," or "your ego is out of control, why don't you just shuck the *beep* up for a change?" Soon, two other people jumped on the bandwagon and began attacking me. And when I say I did nothing to ANY of them, that's the God's honest truth. All I did was exist.

The main troll followed me over to the board discussing the Annie remake from 2014. There, she took it upon herself to label me a racist with every post. Then she "claimed" she was putting me on ignore, which she did indeed do, for a while. But her curiosity got the better of her, and she went off ignore and began attacking me again. If I stood up for myself, it ignited a deluge of posts from her and the little group she commanded. At one point, she posted a link to the FBI, claiming I'd made a "terrorist threat" toward her (which I hadn't). Soon after that, someone sane stepped in and warned her she was on shaky ground. INSTANTLY, she accused this person of being a "sock puppet," just "one more fake identity" I'd created for myself. Whenever someone took up for me, she'd trot out the sock puppet attack. Then, one day, I signed on and discovered she was gone. And so were all her messages, which left huge blank spots on many threads. I found out from one poster that this woman had stepped over the line once too often, and that's why her account was detonated.

A month later, she came back under a different name, but with the same posting style and same insults. She was caught, her account delete AGAIN, and she disappeared...for two months. That's when she came back as a man named "Bookmanmovielover." Thus began her greatest attempt at destroying me, and it was all because I'd won the battle against her merely by doing NOTHING. The only way I could deal with Bookman was to pretend she didn't exist, but she posted everywhere I went again. The only thing that ended her abuse and harassment was the deletion of the message boards.

Wow reading that reminds me of the assaults that I was a victim of on imdb. Is that the way deranged women behave? Geesh I feel so bad that you had to go through that. I completely empathize with you. Although in my case, my attackers always found a way back very quickly from being banned.

@terrygg Yes it is easy to just ignore a trolling/abusive post. But the point is people presumably come to forums to unwind, shoot the shit a little about a film or tv show etc. I joined here not knowing that it was started by someone from the IMDb politics board and as I never explored the IMDb site much I didn't even know it had a political board.

Regardless, if the Admin of this site wants the site to flourish they will have to address the troll problem. They also need to address the constant breaches of TOS.





Oh you think that it's so simple to ignore a troll? Well I will believe that after observing how you handle a troll.

Why are you always reacting to things I write? I'm not even trolling and you have a problem already. Yesterday you accused me of being sensitive. Now look at who's being sensitive.

It's the language he used. That's what I'm criticizing. 

I didn't think he was mean.

I'm just saying that if all someone is going to do is spam insults and antagonize, they can do it somewhere else. Generally speaking, if people like that are just allowed to roam free, it won't be long before people like that are all there is. When I look at someone's post history, I'm looking for anything of actual substance. If 100 out of 100 posts are nothing but "fuck you," "eat shit," and "DIAF," why would I tell everyone else to use the block feature? Do you think that having the ability to hold your nose is what gives someone the right to fart in an elevator? You don't remove the crowd from the troublemakers; you remove the troublemakers from the crowd.

In the three short weeks this forum has been online, 35 users have been banned, and plenty of others have received warnings and requests to modify their behavior. Some think there should be no moderation, while others think we should be more aggressive. I do not believe in an "all or nothing" philosophy, but rest assured that this is not a forum where trolls and troublemakers are allowed to roam free. It should probably also be noted that ultimatums are not persuasive, and as such, any decision to take action is not influenced by threats to leave the forum if we don't give in to demands.