Self-Portrait Of A Crapping Troll
Remember my post Crapping All Over Beauty? I wrote then:
What I’ve learned running a sex blog is that there are a whole host of guys whose only mode of discourse about bodily appearance is to make a negative comment. I think perhaps it originates in adolescent one-upsmanship; one guy says “Sally’s hot, I’d like to do herâ€? and the other guys all say “No, man, she’s a pig, she’s got a huge assâ€? as a way of belittling the first guy. However it started, the result is a fairly large class of guys whose reflex response whenever they see an erotic picture is to say something mean and ugly about the body depicted.
It’s clearly an act of emotional aggression, some sort of attempt to establish superiority by expressing contempt for that which other people consider beautiful.
I was reminded of this when I saw a trollish comment set reproduced on Naked Protesters, consisting of 35 mostly-ugly comments left by the same commenter in the course of fifty short minutes. Here are just three of them:
“I don’t know who the hell she is but somebody please put a shirt on her! ooo, she gross.”
“Oh crap Lesbians! Old ugly lesbians. RUUUUUUNNN”
“What a pic. A boob that is close to dragging the ground. More armpit hair than a lumberjack. And get a load of the tatooed thing behind her. Where do you have to go to find such strangeness?”
Where, indeed?
Shorter URL for sharing: https://www.erosblog.com/?p=2245
When you visit one of those “hot or not” sites that invite votes and/or comments, one has to always remember that the thing about the internet is the anonymity of the commenter. In addition to your posted observation, I have decided that when a flawless young girl gets a low rating, you can usually count on one of three or four other things. Some male who actually prefers the company of other males is jealous of the attractive power of her beauty, or some female is pretending to be a negative male commenter because SHE is jealous of the posted body, or some guy thinks she looks like some girl who had previously rejected his advances, because he was way out of her league, or some clueless young teenager has decided that enormous breast size should be the sole determiner of a woman’s attraction. I’m sure there are other equally telling reasons why this sort of unfortunate trollish behavior occurs. Most of the time it makes the troll look far worse than the object of his criticism.
I believe you are right about the belittling thing. But it has become obvious to me that idiots abound in this country. My wife and I watched a Jackass movie the other day, just to see what the hu-bub was about. Talk about nuts, people, especially young males, will do anything for money. As my wife and I always say when we see such crap “IDIOTS ABOUND”. Thanks for a great website- I really enjoy it. And you just have to ignore the idiots, they’ll die soon enough.
The way I see it, it’s all about self-esteem… They have a low self-esteem and feel it necessary to tear down those that, in their eyes at least, are superior to them. They see beauty and ARE attracted, despite their negative comments.
The only other real reason I can think of is just that they’re trying to stir up shit. They say something that they KNOW people will oppose strongly. I used to have a friend in RL who used to do this (although it’s much easier on the internet because when you sign out, nobody knows who you are) and when challenged he used to say something along the lines of ‘for the sake of it’, so naturally, I still don’t know what drove him to do it.
Basically, I think both those reasons are the same thing though. They feel better about themselves, because they make those around them feel worse.
Why else would they bother commenting? Or at least, in the case of the guy quoted, why would he bother returning 35 times in fifty minutes? If he truly found her/them ugly, he’d have clicked off the page quickly and not dared to return
In between classes I hang out in the activity building on my campus usually on the third floor because it is away from the hustle and bustle of the rest of the campus.
A couple of semesters back there were these guys who would sit at the top and people watch and just take apart women. This was hot but that was to much this or that. And I just wanted to smack them.
Every woman is different and each deserves respect and admiration.
“Mr.Me” (and RoseRed775) make(s) some VERY good point(s). A plain girl would evoke mere apathy, and a truly unattractive girl would evoke honest sympathy in an emotionally healthy individual of either sex.
I have known people whose “default” modus operandi is to tear down others in hopes of raising their own level. You see it in the press when they are so vehemently trashing the sexual attractiveness of the likes of Britney, Paris, Lindsay, et al. I guess my taste must be awful by the way, because I wouldn’t kick any of them out of bed.
There is also an attempt to raise oneself to a level above the “model’s” (I mean that rather loosely, in the sense that any woman whose beauty is exemplary or generally considered to be worthy of emulation or imitation) status. The implied message is “Oh if you think she’s pretty, you should see the women I date…”
I agree with Mr. Me. The gent(?) quoted doth protest too much!!!
“…or some clueless young teenager has decided that enormous breast size should be the sole determiner of a woman’s attraction.”
Agreed. My boyfriend has told me a few times that if we’d known each other when he was fifteen, he wouldn’t have looked at me twice because I don’t have huge boobs.
That said, he still wouldn’t have been this spiteful about an image of someone like me because of it…he would have just moved on. So this kind of energy-sucking hatred of -something- is something I just don’t get. Even if I’m thinking bitchy thoughts about a girl in a picture, why would I spend time and energy typing and sending nasty comments about her? Her perceived unattractiveness doesn’t -offend- me.