On a TROLL

Back in the latter half of the previous decade,when the misshapen troll face first made its appearance on the world wide web,it was generally considered to be a political statement globally against everything that people deemed wrong,corrupt or detrimental to their existence.

Back in the latter half of the previous decade,when the misshapen troll face first made its appearance on the world wide web,it was generally considered to be a political statement globally against everything that people deemed wrong,corrupt or detrimental to their existence. ‘Getting Trolled’ was more of an insult than a joke. However,over the last couple of years,the entire concept of trolling has moved on from being a political sledge fest to one that just aims to generate laughs about daily issues.

Take the case of Navdeep Tupe,an IT professional. In his mid-20s,Tupe has recently created a troll page on Facebook called the Wacky Troll Forum (WTF). His main aim is to share the jokes which perpetuate through his own friends,with people across the world. My friends and I would end up creating these funny jokes about situations,people,habits and even the problems arising out of modern day technology. A few days back,we actually came across websites dedicated to the type of humour we were creating. We created the troll page about a month back, he says.

Primarily dealing with comical day-to-day incidents or even whacky happenings,cartoons have started garnering a lot of fan following recently. Facebook in particular,has dedicated pages to cartoons like Troll India,Just Troll,Trollpedia and Troll. Even statistics are in the favour of these sites with most of them registering over one lakh members who like the page and share jokes posted on them.

Reluctant to share names,the operator of Troll Happens said in an email interview,that the troll jokes are a fun way to entertain people and help in generating revenue through advertisements on their blog. However,the objective,according to him,is to make fun of daily life situations. In early 2012,the responses were slow but they picked up gradually. Mainly because anyone and everyone can contribute their jokes here,” he mentions.

Interestingly,the jokes have a pattern too. They feature common characters going by the names of Dwerp,Dwerpina,Twerp and others. Other cartoons involve writing humorous captions for posters or photos of famous personalities in a context that can be related to everyday events. A commonly featured series of photos on this line is that of actor and sports personality ‘The Rock’ Dwayne Johnson in a scene from the film ‘The Race to Witch Mountain’ along with co-star Anna Sophia Robb. The series of pictures highlight Johnson driving a car with Robb in the backseat. Corresponding funny captions have been put in to make it look akin to a funny conversation.

But all is not fun and games in the trolling world as ex-Associate Director of the Asian School of Cyber Laws,Terence Sequeira points out. “While the trolling jokes are popular on Facebook and on Twitter,it is still considered as a form of abusing someone or a group. Also the legal ramifications for trolls put them in a very grey area. There are troll cartoons that can be deemed offensive even if funny. How they are dealt with as cyber law related violations depend from case to case,” he says.

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