English College Writing Role of Empathy in Combatting Toxic Cultures

Question:-

What is the role of empathy in combatting toxic cultures?

Answer:-

Online platforms allow anonymous posting which serve as encouragement for trolls as trollers know that they cannot be traced (Cheng, Bernstein, Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, & Leskovec, 2018). Perception of social power can be another reason where people perceive themselves to be higher up in the social strata and thus can remain unharmed. Personal experiences of past bullying and inferiority complex are also predominant reasons behind trolling. Some trollers also fail to understand the impact of intended harm caused by trolls in a person’s life and therefore they continue with their activities. Two popular games which has witnessed intensive trolling are League of Legends where abuses are hurled at those performing poorly and World of Warcraft where in-game trolls have been quite popular (Thacker & Griffiths, 2014).  

One of my friends had faced severe internet trolling a few months back. She has always been an advocate of body positivity, the ability of being comfortable in one’s own skin and self-perception of body image. She has taken part in several activisms that support these causes. She used to be quite healthy individual when she had started promoting these causes and had received immense positive responses and appreciations over the past couple of years but she decided to take a step towards fitness and reduce weight, which was apparently her “hypocrisy” as per the internet trolls. Her transformation was due to health needs, not that she was uncomfortable about her body. Now, the same people have been trolling her by saying and threatening her that she should not promote these causes anymore because she already has a “perfect figure” and cannot perceive the pain of obese people. The appropriate action against such trolls is to simply delete and block.