"Trolls" (noun)/"Trolling" (verb) on the internet: a person(s) who goes onto social media related sites, newsgroups, chat rooms or through emails to cause arguments, discord, harassment and to upset people by writing inflammatory or hurtful statements. A deeper truth or reason might be at the core of the trolls' behavior.

A TV historian and a daily blogger offer up some advice to understanding trolls and how to deal with them.

Felix Kjellberg had created the popular YouTube channel PewDiePie, but he decided to ban people from commenting on his channel. Kjellberg could no longer stomach the trolls' comments, so he wanted to silence them. Unfortunately, he could lose fans and followers and become forced to go to another platform, The Guardian reported.

Enter the TV historian and Cambridge professor Mary Beard, who offered up some simple and sound researched advice.

Beard was inspired after she learned that one of her students was trolling online -- the student was later exposed. Beard, who wrote the student a letter of recommendation, felt strongly that the student should not be punished for "one moment of idiocy," The Guardian reported.  

Beard had cited a comprehensive paper titled "Trolls just want to have fun" as her understanding and realizing that trolls have obnoxious personality characteristics that can get out of hand. Based on the paper, Beard cites three reasons why trolls behave the way they do, The Guardian reported.

Firstly, Beard says that trolls are more than likely to display noxious personality characteristics or traits that tear down a person's ability to build relationships and operate in a civilised manner. According to the paper and Beard, trolls could be impulsive and "charming manipulators"; as well as psychopathic -- cold, fearless and antisocial -- and particularly more sadistic than the overall population, The Guarding reported.

In other words, trolls enjoy harming and intimidating people. Their behavior is more in line with online sadism and cyber-bullying.

Secondly, taking into account some trolls' sadistic nature, they commit the act of trolling by going online and pushing people's impulses. It is the "anonymity and temporary identity loss" that gives them this levity. According to the paper, this phenomenon is called "deindividuation": it is a loss of self-awareness in groups. To some psychologists, it tends to emerge in areas of interpersonal relations such as gaming, role playing and crowd behaviors, in particular hooliganism, The Guardian reported.

Does the paper suggest that trolls are a form of hooligans? No. But in these online situations, the trolls tend to match the crowds' behavior which are usually sadistic. Trolling tends to bring out the worst side in people, even if you are not naturally sadistic. The trolling lifts our "morals and social etiquette" which regulates our behavior in normal situations, therefore encouraging dissent and influencing and triggering abrasive reactions, The Guardian reported.

The third reason for trolling behavior is about status. The more they do it, the more it attracts readers' attention, and it upsets more people. Then heated debates are sparked, and some of them even gain approval. This makes the troll feel important, even more so than they feel in their everyday lives. One could say that trolling is another form of internet activity that promotes narcissistic motives, since trolls might attract far less people in their physical world, The Guardian reported.   

The paper and Beard suggests one remedy for trolls: Ignore them. But by giving them anonymity, it gives them more power to be obnoxious.

One writer learned the hard way of seeking advice from online sources, from trolls. It almost ruined her life. First it started by one troll diagnosing her behavior; they called her a person who suffered from "Histrionic Personality Disorder" (HPD). HPD is real. Soon the writer started to believe it, Bustle reported.

The writer sought out further advice from a writers group. They told her that they don't really read much of the comments from people online because sometimes they are mainly off the mark or wrong. The writer thought that seeking advice might give her better exposure for her work and writing, so she decided to read comments daily. It was her low self-esteem that caused her to seek out this sort of approval, Bustle reported.

It soon got worse and it affected her relationship with her husband. She constantly sought validation from her online trolls until she one day posted an essay titled "The disparity between me and my husband's incomes." The trolls descended upon the writer. But the only person that understood the content of her writing was her husband, who stated that "those people totally missed the point of the essay," Bustle reported. The writer no longer seeks advice online.  

How can the trolls be managed? According to another paper titled "Don't Feed the Trolls!" it is up to the online sites, editors, authors and managers to take steps to minimizing trolling. The paper even suggests that you should disable anonymity, moderate the comments, ban offenders and take effective steps to stop trolling, The Guardian reported.