The Trolls Are Loud, But Few

Anyone working in journalism the last few years has noticed the rise of the Anonymous Troll, the frequent online commenter who hides behind anonymity and tosses cheap pot-shots at the writer, or just uses the forum to talk about how they believe Jews are taking over the world or Obama is to blame for everything that is wrong with society.

To them, it's a kind of game. Like Dungeons and Dragons. They can pretend to be someone else, say some things to just get people angry, and then sit back and watch the drama.
The trolling comments on this blog have greatly increased in the last few weeks/months. It really took off around the time I spoke out about the criminal history of Maura's siblings and the man her mother had an affair with and continued as I've reported on recent possible sightings of Maura throughout the U.S.
It's interesting that much of these comments can be backtracked to a small area of Manchester, New Hampshire, which is within the range of the infamous "londonderry ping," that phone call Maura's cell received the afternoon of her disappearance. Though these comments all come from Manchester, they appear under at least a dozen different monikers (some using proxies which attempt to reroute their location to other cities). I keep a list of their I.P.s in case their anger escalates to actual danger at some point. It is also interesting to me that Troy Killman, the silent moderator of the Maura Murray Facebook Page (a young man who is obsessed with the case but has no academic purpose for being so involved) lived and attended school in Manchester, according to one of his multiple personal Facebook pages. Killman banned me from that page when I posted about recent sightings.
I honestly don't know what to make of all this. But it's odd.
At first, I figured I would just ban all unmoderated comments to this blog. But that doesn't help generate new leads. So, going forward, I plan to simply delete these trolling comments. It's a little more work for me, but it seems to make the most sense.