This seems naive to me. If trolling is an effective strategy, then high-consciousness individuals will seek to troll to further their own gains.
> and see through the troll's bullshit and do not engage with it
Are you certain that this strategy stops trolls? Or does this only give trolls more room to spew their ideology, growing their political power?
If the level of consciousness in the general population is high enough, trolling will be a behavior of the past, like human sacrifice.
Your interpretation is a spiral dynamics stage orange criticism of green and turquoise. The spiral dynamics model of psycho/social development is really good for analyzing and explaining these types of problems, like being able to predict human behavior and understand why certain humans behave the ways that they do.
The worst trolls are the ones with ideology, who believe themselves to be working on behalf of a greater power. To take a relatively innocent example: Tesla Trolls will harass, dox, and even SWAT "Tesla Shorts", in defense of their beloved company.
So lets circle back again: Why are these Tesla trolls trolling the internet? Because they're fighting to support their company, and it seems to be an effective tactic for intimidating and silencing critics.
Same things happen with Apple Fanboys, XBox fanboys, etc. etc. Trolls "fight" on behalf of the powers they've given their allegiance to. And of course, Democrats and Republicans are big ones too... but also subgroups: Antifa, Black Lives Matter, Proud Boys, etc. etc. They all have trolls, they all will harass and demean you if you disagree with them online.
Any "serious" internet discussion will devolve into troll tactics these days. Why? Because its effective. Apple vs Epic Games is just the latest bit, and we're certainly going to see internet trolls start to weaponize forums to bring people to their side.
That was what made me think you were refering to selfishness.
High consciousness by definition resists ideology. Ideology is a limitation of consciousness.
Trolls that are harassing, doxing, and SWATing, are doing it for selfish reasons, even if their excuse is something external.
Intimidating and silencing critics, classic stage red, sound like any presidents you know?
I don't disagree that trolling is effective, the majority of the population is somewhere in stage red/blue/orange, very few of us are green or above.
I understand what you're explaining, I think having an overview of the model will help you understand what I am pointing to.
This seems highly unlikely to me.
Consider Twitter, Blue-checkmarks, as well as Facebook. There are countless trolls with verified identities. Indeed, "troll behavior" has permeated into our political system and very public figures are openly using anti-social language... to the benefit of their political movements.
From a Machiavellian perspective: people become trolls because it works. Its an effective strategy for gathering like-minded followers, and to demonstrate a "leadership" quality, one that demonstrates ambitious behavior.
Some political leaders are incredibly similar to trolls. Robespierre, Lenin, Hitler. Yeah, we look down upon them decades later, but these figures were hugely influential during their times and got a lot of things accomplished.
This article assumes that troll-behavior is not beneficial to the troll. That's a horrible miscalculation. Troll-behavior certainly hurts the victim, but it seems to benefit the troll in my experience. At a minimum, it benefits them with followers (other trolls who want to help the greater cause).
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So lets circle back to the top. Why do people become trolls?
Answer: Because its an effective strategy.
The important followup question: How do we build a world (or if not the world... then at least a community) where trolling becomes an ineffective, or counter-productive strategy?