For the past few years, I've been a frequent lurker of various forums. These forums are mainly focused on skyscrapers, cities, the academe, food, and many other topics. Though I participate today, I'm still more of a lurker because I gain so much information already (may or may not be true) from merely reading the posts of the forum users.
But don't take everything that you read seriously. This is the Internet, where everyone can claim to be someone else, where everyone can become an expert and give so-called "expert opinion" though they are merely teenagers who have nothing better to do. This is especially true in forums, where there's a ready audience that you can exploit and kid around.
In forum-speak, there's what we call as "trolls," or those people who have nothing significant to add to the discussion. Instead of giving relevant information and opinion, they thrive in making sure that the conversation goes out-of-topic by posting agitating responses and starting "flame wars." They are the poltergeists of new media. But whay do they do this?
The thing about trolls is that they are almost always not like that in real life. You might think that a troll is probably an unemployed nuisance, but lo and behold, the troll is actually a banker by profession. Why do they do this, then, if they are educated and all? One theory suggests that this is just a manifestation of a hidden personality, something that they used to not show because of society's limitations. In a forum, they can be anonymous. Since they don't know anyone in the forum and nobody knows them, they are free to say everything that they want, even if this means trolling.
So before you even participate in a forum, think about that carefully. Can you handle trolls? Can you detect them immediately? Some of them are pretty good at it already. They are so great at trolling that they can force the gullible out of you, so better be careful.
