The Simple Forester

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. The commander claimed he had been a simple forester before the war. He was often quoted in the Russian media, where he told fables of heroic deeds by his men in the face of the cowardly savagery he always portrayed Ukrainian soldiers as engaging in, and naive foreign diplomats. The troll and trolling metaphor born of folklore continuously interacted with reality on that bridge. Soon I began to see that the emotional resonance in my gut of the artillery duels which I witnessed between Ukrainian armed forces at one end of the bridge and the Russian occupiers at the other end 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 2025)

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