Internet trolls work by exploiting the gap between the virtual and the real. They float, weightless and anonymous, across the web, then reach out and rattle people who are pinned down by fixed ideologies, moral codes and human emotions. Any attachment to principles — even really basic ones like “don’t torture grieving parents” — gives the troll an opening. Stretching back to Mr. Bungle, trolling was always about the distance between people who care and people who don’t. The people who cared always lost. Often, they were counseled to detach as much as the trolls had: to withhold their outrage, to not “feed the trolls,” to pretend there was a real distinction between doing horrible things and meaning them. So the trolls scampered on to their next targets, amassing more followers along the way.
Amanda Hess, “Click Bait”, The New York Times Magazine (5 March 2017), 12.