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JP Duminy gets trolled

SA cricketer JP Duminy and long-time girlfriend Sue Erasmus were married on Saturday. That morning Duminy tweeted, "On my way to the chapel to get married. Best day of my life." Little did he know that the moment the news went online his ‘beautiful day’ would be blighted by trolls.

Troll (/trol/)
Noun: One who posts a deliberately provocative message to a newsgroup or message board with the intention of causing maximum disruption and argument. (www.urbandictionary.com)

Trolls don’t care about human feelings like ‘love’ and ‘sadness’. To a troll Duminy’s wedding is nothing more than a hate fest and a time to shine. “Shame living the coloured dream, chasing after white women once u make money...” one of the milder comments read. The really hateful (and illegal) ones were deleted.

And don’t think for a minute that these attention-seeking trolls have a conscience. Even a story about a baby dying is troll fodder. When we ran the heartbreaking story Mandela’s great-grandchild dies, one comment read, "Ho hum! Just because they’re famous they think bad things can’t happen to them."

Why is it that manners don’t exist online? Be polite, don't hurt people's feelings, love your neighbour – none of that stuff counts.

In the future we will practically live our entire lives online. And what type of society will we have if trolling is a survival tactic?  

We wouldn’t tolerate a fool in a mask shouting random obscenities at a party, so why do we allow it in our digital lives? I say, it's time the masks come off.

Til next week,

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