Angry, powerless people can use their interactions with others on the internet as an outlet, to correct views they see as threatening, or just to lash out at people they perceive as 'the problem', and/or a way to feel they have a voice/are making some difference when they don't get enough opportunity to do this offline.
Separately, trolls just like to mess with people for a basic sense of power and entertainment, and to feel like they matter, again when they otherwise don't have ways to feel that offline.
Paid trolls/bots can also express negative views either about specific topics, or on specific communities, if these are targeted as going against some political or commercial goal. These may also intersperse red herring interactions that are not to do with the explicit goal to make the account appear more like a regular person's.
It can be hard to tell which is which, but these all exist, and all can manifest in a pattern of seemingly inconsistent but predominantly negative posts/comments.
For me, all it took was learning to just let myself decide to do nothing when I think someone is wrong, even if I feel that view or speech or whatever might be harmful to them or others in some moralistic sense, and especially if I find myself already frustrated before I've engaged. Everything isn't up to everyone to sort out all the time, and it's been hugely freeing to just let it go and focus on literally anything else in my life. The internet has a way of making us over-value the thoughts and opinions of strangers sometimes (seemingly particularly those we have nothing in common with and nothing to gain from arguing with).
Angry, powerless people can use their interactions with others on the internet as an outlet, to correct views they see as threatening, or just to lash out at people they perceive as 'the problem', and/or a way to feel they have a voice/are making some difference when they don't get enough opportunity to do this offline.
Separately, trolls just like to mess with people for a basic sense of power and entertainment, and to feel like they matter, again when they otherwise don't have ways to feel that offline.
Paid trolls/bots can also express negative views either about specific topics, or on specific communities, if these are targeted as going against some political or commercial goal. These may also intersperse red herring interactions that are not to do with the explicit goal to make the account appear more like a regular person's.
It can be hard to tell which is which, but these all exist, and all can manifest in a pattern of seemingly inconsistent but predominantly negative posts/comments.
For me, all it took was learning to just let myself decide to do nothing when I think someone is wrong, even if I feel that view or speech or whatever might be harmful to them or others in some moralistic sense, and especially if I find myself already frustrated before I've engaged. Everything isn't up to everyone to sort out all the time, and it's been hugely freeing to just let it go and focus on literally anything else in my life. The internet has a way of making us over-value the thoughts and opinions of strangers sometimes (seemingly particularly those we have nothing in common with and nothing to gain from arguing with).