Dear miliMeow:

You are welcome.

“I don’t think my anger gets relieved when I argue with people online. I think it’s magnified instead, so I get even more upset and angry if I continue doing this for a long time. Which is why it’s so puzzling“- seems like at first this activity relieved your anger/ made you feel better, so you kept doing it and you got hooked on it: it became a habit/ an addiction. When a person starts taking a drug, an opioid, it feels good the first 10 times or so (I am guessing). But on the 11th time, it doesn’t feel good anymore, but the person is already hooked on it, so he/ she keeps taking it. It’s just too hard to stop.

In which case, deleting accounts where you can possibly reply to people anonymously, like you mentioned in your recent post, is a good idea. In the opioid analogy, it would  be like deleting the contact information to your drug source, or relocating so that your drug source is not available to you anymore.

“I try to wean myself off of it and be nice on the internet. But before long, some triggering post on the internet brings me back to that state and I begin trying to mentally torture people online again“-

You used the verb “wean off” which is often used in the context of drug addiction.

medical xpress. com: ” There is an urgent need to understand why people troll. Recent Australian estimates show about one in three internet users have experienced online harassment… Internet trolling is defined as a malicious online behavior, characterized by aggressive and deliberate provocation of others. ‘Trolls’ seek to provoke, upset and harm others via inflammatory messages and posts… Trolling can cause significant harm and distress. It is associated with serious physical and psychological effects, including disrupted sleep, lowered self-esteem, depression, self-harm, suicidal ideation, and in some cases, even suicide. In 2019, The Australia Institute estimated trolling and online abuse had cost the Australian economy up to $3.7 billion in health costs and lost income….The most powerful predictor of trolling was sadism. The more someone enjoys hurting others, the more likely it is they will troll… The significance of psychopathy in the results also indicates trolls have an empathy deficit, particularly when it comes to their ability to experience and internalize other people’s emotions”.

psychology today. com: “According to the Pew Research Center (Online Harassment, 2017), 41 percent of Americans have themselves experienced online harassment, and over 60 percent report having been witness to such actions. While many of these behaviors are of the milder variety, nearly 20 percent of people in the Pew survey reported they had “been subjected to particularly severe forms of harassment online, such as physical threats, harassment over a sustained period, sexual harassment or stalking… Because loneliness represents a state of chronic frustration and unmet need, it can trigger aggression toward others as a way to discharge tension or express oneself.. psychopathy and everyday sadism have been found to correlate more strongly with internet trolling in previous studies”-

Do you agree with my anger-relief turned addiction theory, and do you think that an empathy deficit, sadism, or everyday sadism- defined as “the pleasure taken at another person’s distress”, and/ or loneliness (boldfaced and italicized by me, above) apply to you, in the context of trolling and otherwise in life?

anita