I think a few of you guys are interested in mental health stuff, so I thought you might like to hear about http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886914000324.

In two online studies (total N = 1215), respondents completed personality inventories and a survey of their Internet commenting styles. Overall, strong positive associations emerged among online commenting frequency, trolling enjoyment, and troll identity, pointing to a common construct underlying the measures. Both studies revealed similar patterns of relations between trolling and the Dark Tetrad of personality: trolling correlated positively with sadism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism, using both enjoyment ratings and identity scores. Of all personality measures, sadism showed the most robust associations with trolling and, importantly, the relationship was specific to trolling behavior. Enjoyment of other online activities, such as chatting and debating, was unrelated to sadism. Thus cyber-trolling appears to be an Internet manifestation of everyday sadism.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82cPC4KaRZA

So trolls incline towards being sadistic, psychopathic, narcissistic, and Machiavellian.

Amazing who you meet on the internet!

h/t http://laughingsquid.com/

I love trolling but I'm extremely far from any of those things, and yes I have been psych-evaluated, I'm too far in the other direction, too altruistic and sympathetic to my own detriment. I guess I could be venting all the pent up rage I have from always putting myself last? I dunno. I will inconvenience myself greatly to save a worm on the pavement. Definitely not a psychopath or sadistic.

Wat? People that get a kick out of upsetting other people are sadistic in a way?

NO WAI!1111eleven111!11111