Why I have banned the word Troll from my newsroom.

Names are funny things.

It has long been recognised that there is power in a name. Some religions believe that simply by naming a creature, the first man claimed dominion over them.

A name gives identity and being to something unsubstantiated. It makes it real.

This “naming” is also where most of the mass media’s power lies.  A random collection of view points, facts, or allegations are formed into a story, but give that story a Name and it grows.

In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Dawn French, playing the fat lady in a portrait calls a group of school children “plebs” for not appreciating her singing voice. Recently, it was claimed that a man called some other men plebs in the street.

Who cares? Well we all do because it’s Plebgate!!

Plebgate has an identity, and lets us all know that this story is about the issues involving Cabinet Ministers (allegedly) being a bit too posh, the police being poor victims (depending on our mood that week) and various other ideas and asides. All summed up neatly in one word.

Remember Happy Slapping? That was a couple of kids being nasty to people in the street until it was given a name by the newspapers. Then it was a nationwide phenomenon, crisis etc.

Which brings me to my current conundrum: Trolls. Not the 7 foot Danish variety. Not the Moomins. The type that exists online.

The word Troll was coined several years ago on sites like 4chan, 9gag etc, to describe a trickster. Someone who says something to get a reaction, create annoyance, or fool someone into doing something.

Here is an example:

The expression “Don’t feed the trolls” became common on forums to try and warn people off speaking to known troublemakers.

Of course at the internet grew, and people started putting more and more personal information online, making more and more vulnerable targets, trolling changed, and sometimes got quite nasty.

I would be willing to bet that if you publicised a book of condolence and left it unguarded overnight on a stage in central Birmingham with a pen, you would come back to find people had written some pretty nasty things in there.

People are horrible.

But for some reason, everyone thought that doing exactly what I have described above, but with a Facebook page left open on the internet, it would be fine.

People are horrible.

This is where our trolling story ends.

Unfortunately, this is roughly where the mass media arrives.

The word troll was misappropriated solely to mean people who targeted others to say nasty things. Which is fairly harmless if it was just a misappropriated word. But it’s not. It is a Name.

So when twitter arrives on the scene, and some pretty lowlife people find out that you can set up an anonymous account and say anything you like to people who would never normally hear you… Those lowlifes were given a Name.

You are no longer a sad loser with a laptop and no friends, you are no longer a psychopath hell bent on stalking and threatening to kill someone you disagree with… You are now a member of a special online group, one of many, and when you are one of many, your individual behaviour can be held up to less scrutiny, both by yourself, and by everyone else.

By calling someone a troll, you are giving them an excuse. You are giving them a cause. You are giving them power.

Stop it.