Online and In Real Life: The Same Material

I noted how similar Internet-based emotion-moving trolls and trolling was to the manner of the Russian army commander of the trolls who guarded the Russia-occupied end of the bridge with whom I had to negotiate every day… Soon I began to see that the emotional resonance in my gut of the artillery duels which I witnessed had a Family Resemblance to the feeling I had when someone online was trolling me. That online and In Real Life trolling were made of the same material: emotion.

Source: Book Proposal (May 2024)

The troll and trolling metaphor born of folklore continuously interacted with reality on that bridge.

Source: Book Proposal (May 2024)

The author’s origin story: stationed on a bridge in eastern Ukraine between Russian and Ukrainian forces, he recognised that the Russian commander’s daily fantastical stories and internet trolling were made of the same substance. This is how the redefinition was born — not from theory, but from the zero-line of an actual war.

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