Everybody is a troll

A head, part of the Kingston Sculpture Biennial. It was standing by Monday, with the greenery serving as hair. 

People lose their heads over something online, and we sometimes react in unbecoming ways. We're quick on criticism and slow on nuance, much less empathy. Mobs are easy to join and easier to feed, and pitchforks are only a click away.
We complain that the Internet is full of trolls, but those trolls have to come from somewhere. And much like people buying things at Walmart and eating McDonalds and listening to Coldplay, the culprit is us.
It was us all along.

"NOT ME!" you say. And that would be you saying, in a way, that you are better than others. Judging. Trolling. Like this very sentence.
It's so easy to fall.

DFM Chat on improving conversations on social media platforms, comments and trolls

Dancing Troll Face via the Interwebz

Journalists, members of Digital First Media and pretty much everyone else who wants to - are going to be taking part on the weekly Twitter chat Wednesday at noon, Eastern Time.

Today we're talking about story comments, conversations on social media and how to deal with trolls.

The live feed is posted below. But you can also follow the chat here or here or also here. And you can also check out past chats over here.

If you want to chime in, post a comment in the container or a tweet with the hashtag "#dfmchat" so it can automatically appear below.

How to block a troll from a Twitter chat

As you might be aware, I host the Digital First Media Twitter chat, #DFMchat, at noon on Wednesdays, in which journalists and anyone who wants can discuss issues as they relate to our current digital environment.

Unfortunately, for the past weeks, a troll impersonating me, @Lvanlajara, which uses a lowercase "l" so it looks like me, with my avatar, has been bombing the hashtag, dropping irrelevant tweets and a whole bunch of curses.

The first thing to if you are encountered with a troll is to block and report, which is easily done on Twitter.

Hashtag blocking can be easily accomplish like this: