One feature of the internet that one runs across over and over is the large number of "trolls". Internet trolls are people who delight in creating havoc and destruction. Although they might sometimes be hackers, they do not have to be hackers. Trolls manipulate people and create disputes, often for their own amusement, or just because they can. Perhaps they feel some sense of power at being able to control people and make them believe whatever the troll tells them.
It can take very little to create havoc and trouble. Here is an example of what a troll can do to create a problem. Sitting in a discussion group, one woman named Y hears X talking to another woman, asks X if he has been "cheating on her" to flirt with X. The troll overhears this and asks what Y meant by that. X points out that the flirting woman Y flirts with everyone in the room. A few weeks later, X is explaining that he had left the venue but had been persuaded to return by the flirting woman Y who was having a health crisis, and was "desperate", meaning desperate about her health problems. These two conversations are saved away by the troll for a week or two, and then reappeared as a rumor, passed on "in confidence" to the flirting woman Y. The troll repackaged these two stories as, "X said that Y is a desperate old hag who cannot get a man and has to flirt with old men". Of course, Y is upset by this, and trouble is created between X and Y.
Another example of trolling I have observed revolved around a quote from a newspaper article. The newspaper article includes a given statement. The statement is quoted exactly, but the troll maintains that this quote is inaccurate. When the troll is shown that the quote is accurate, which takes a huge amount of effort, he claims that the quote is still inaccurate becdause the newspaper got it incorrect. When the author of the article is contacted and it is shown that the newspaper did not make a mistake from other sources, then the troll claims that the newspaper quote is unfair. And this continues on, for weeks and months, with the troll recruiting hundreds of people to come to his aid to correct this "injustice". As each of these who are recruited eventually learn the truth, they lose interest, and are therefore called "unethical" and "sociopaths". The troll stays calm and adopts the position that everyone else, even if the others number in the hundreds or thousands, are in the wrong. To an outside observer who sees people getting upset with the troll, the troll seems perfectly reasonable and the others seem to be behaving outrageously because they are frustrated with the troll. The troll manipulates others and gets a platform and a lot of attention. And this continues until finally someone in a position of power removes the troll from the internet forum.
During trolling, facts are altered, and repackaged, just enough to cause a problem. However, histories are not distorted so far that this can be chalked up to more than an "honest" mistake. Trolls are incredibly sincere when they present their versions of events, so it is difficult to fault them; they seem so honest and believable and earnest. Often, trolls cause other internet participants to get into huge fights with each other. They are incredibly brilliant at creating fights and disruption.
This is very similar to the behavior one observes of thsoe suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). BPD, soon to be probably officially reclassified as a type of Dissociative Identity Disorder, was controversial until functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) showed that the brains of those with BPD operate differently than the brains of normal people. Borderlines use many of the same techniques as trolls, and have many other characteristics similar to trolls. Borderlines also create many of the same effects that trolls do; people that interact with them become very frustrated, and might lash out. Fights are caused by those who have to deal with trolls on a regular basis, because of how the borderlines have manipulated them.
Given the similarities, it makes one wonder if there is any connection between internet trolling and borderline personality disorder.
