Ranjona Banerji: The miserable life of trolls

TMC leader Derek OrsquoBrien lashes out at Twitter trolls in Parliament on February 2 PicPTII donrsquot know about you but onersquos heart has to feel real pain for proBJP internet celebrities trolls and so on Their life is tough and miserable There they are expressing their freedom of expression on Twitter guaranteed to them in Guru Golwalkarrsquos Bunch of Thoughts and in the Bal Narendra comics They use language so wittily and with such zest For instance when they tell a wellknown writer that she is not getting enough sex and thatrsquos why she tweeted condolences after a death in a political family Come on you liberals Whatrsquos so objectionable about thatMost rightthinking people of course understand that a troll has no option but to tweet like this After all liberals have long ruined the country with their talk about Muslim problems or caste discrimination There is no such thing as caste discrimination in India All rightthinking people have been taught that at proper schools where proper history is taught mdash not those rubbish Nehruvian or Christian missionary type schools that other people have attended The caste system for instance was brought to India by Muslim conquerors It is only evil Leftists socialists people who went to JNU historians intellectuals experts and other unreliable people who will tell you otherwiseSo what else is a troll to do but to correct all these misconceptions about Indian society How else can a troll stop Muslims from getting all the benefits in India How else can a troll convince you that you are wrong if he or she does not bring in your sex life your motherrsquos anatomy and so on into his or her tweets These are standard ways in which to convince the evil liberal that a troll is always right and usually rightwingTrolls also have to track and correct you by gender Women must be specially targeted so that they learn proper lessons about how women should behave It is not the fault of trolls that so many women think they can say what they like or behave in any way they want to And women who are also activists communists leftists intellectuals journalists and such like are human abominations They need special attention Trolls dedicate so much of their time and effort to get these women back to the right norms of behaviour according to the Troll Guide to Females And how little such trolls are appreciated People on social media get more upset about how dogs are treated than they do about how trolls are treatedMany people also uselessly complain that trolls make rape and death threats This is a gross exaggeration and another way to intimidate and cause pain to trolls No liberal ever mentions that for every 6000 rape threats that a rightwing proBJP troll may make a troll who owes allegiance to another political system makes at least one or two such threats Do people care that they are only maligning BJP trolls Do they Do they Never BJP trolls have to bear the brunt of all this selfrighteous anger from liberals and Congress AAP SP TMC BSP add any political party except BJP and its allies here stoogesAnd now the worst has happened The name of a troll has been mentioned in Parliament The hardworking troll has been forced to suspend his Twitter account He can no longer tell women that they are sexually frustrated or tell journalists that they are ldquopresstitutesrdquo He can no longer attack people who dislike Prime Minister Narendra Modi the greatest prime minister in the world He can no longer abuse anyone as freely as his freedom of expression guaranteed in the Constitution written by various BJP stalwarts allows him This is a truly heartwrenching situationLuckily for this particular troll a rightthinking rightwing magazine and a rightthinking editor have started a campaign to save this troll from this gruesome and bloodthirsty attack by a nonBJP person Mentioning someonersquos actual name when the troll hides behind a fake name How wicked and liberal is that Our very foundation as a democracy has been threatened by this one actionThe divine right of the troll is to viciously abuse and insult and to spread false information It is heartening that some people at least understand that in a posttruth world the troll is vital for ldquoalternative factsrdquo and plain bigoted rubbishNoRanjona Banerji is a senior journalist You can follow her on Twitter ranjona Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycom