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Jackson's avatar

This is terrifying. I hate it. But thank you for writing it.

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Hugh Douglas's avatar

Very informative and helpful, thanks Paul.

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Dr Sea's avatar

This is so good, Paul! Did you come up with all these categories yourself or is there a “troll classification” in the DSM or some other psychiatric text? Otherwise, you need to write a book! 🧌

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Paul Wilson's avatar

Thanks, Sea.

While the articles are grounded in a lot of personality (disorder) research, the application to a troll typology is all mine.

One of the problems with the DSM is that it's rather opaque to non-psychologists and doesn't contain any practical advice. It also focuses on what it considers clinically significant expressions and thus completely misses out on what I would call "the continuum model of psychopathology", hence why the recent 'everyday sadism' research that I've expanded on was so valuable when I first read it.

And it has not escaped me that my Substacks could be viewed as the serialised first draft of a book. So thanks for that encouragement. Maybe down the track, I should see if there is any interest from commissioning editors.

Editors do pay attention to the audience size you already have, so tell your friends to subscribe, even if just for free, as everything helps.

It would indeed be great to get this troll self-defence advice into the hands of more people so we can disempower the trolls and reclaim public social media discourse. The world needs that more than ever, right now!

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Dr Sea's avatar

💯 it’s invaluable advice, truly, and so well packaged! Makes psychiatric disorders really accessible to the masses. I’ll make sure to share it far and wide so people sign up!

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