Trolls and Chessplayers

     Trolling - I see a lot of it on Internet chess forums.  So, who are these people? Trolling is the act of enraging people by flinging verbal feces and being rude, mean and annoying. In Brazil, trolls are referred to as pombos which comes from the popular Portuguese adage, arguing with fulano is the same as playing chess with a pigeon: the pigeon defecates on the table, drops the pieces and simply flies away, claiming victory. In Chinese, trolling is referred to as … bái làn ( … literally: "white rot"), which describes a post completely nonsensical and full of folly made to upset others, and derives from a Taiwanese slang term for the male genitalia, where genitalia that is pale white in color represents that someone is young and thus foolish.

     Internet Trolls are narcissists, psychopaths, and sadists. Trolls will lie, exaggerate, and offend to get a response. A psychology paper says so. The research, conducted by Erin Buckels of the University of Manitoba and two colleagues, sought to investigate whether people who engage in trolling are characterized by personality traits that fall in the so-called Dark Tetrad: Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), narcissism (egotism and self-obsession), psychopathy (the lack of remorse and empathy), and sadism (pleasure in the suffering of others). Slate article

A funny Chessbase article on chess trolls 
The 7 Types of Internet Trolls We Wish Would Move to Arizona   
Chess and Mental Illness
Expertise in Chess: Does It Help to Be Paranoid? 
Poker vs. chess and personalities - Bilalic, McLeod, and Gobet (2006) showed that children with lower Agreeableness were much more likely to take up chess, and also proposed males’ generally lower scores on Agreeableness as one reason why boys took up chess much more commonly than girls. Avni, Kipper, and Fox (1987) found that adult chess players are also more introverted than the general population, marking a potential particular likeness between poker and chess players. 

  Which begs the question, what of Bloggers? 

The Twisted Psychology of Bloggers vs. Journalists 
The Psychology of Weblogs – a series of articles was written to examine the phenomenon of Weblogs (or blogging), online writings by individuals linking to interesting resources and news in specific topic areas on a daily basis. 
Blogging: What It Is, What It's Not, and Why We Even Bother