While Wikipedia has a detailed explanation of a social media troll that states it to be “someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as a forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion,” the Urban Dictionary has a more relatable one - “Being a prick on the internet because you can.”

Losing to archrivals has always triggered emotional outbursts from the masses. India’s loss to Pakistan in an ICC event have previously led to masses burning effigies in front of cricketers’ homes too, but the brunt of social media was fully evident after India’s defeat to them in the Champions Trophy final. The nation that was celebrating India’s unbeaten run in the tournament till then had swiftly escalated into blaming the players of match-fixing. Ramdas Athawale, the Union Minister of State for Social Justice and Empowerment had alleged Virat Kohli and Yuvraj Singh and the team of fixing the final. While his opinion had denigrators, there were many who believed his claims as well and that’s where the problem significantly lies.

Canadian tennis player Peter Polansky, who is ranked 122 in the ATP had read out some tweets that he gets regularly in an interview with Associated Press, which read - 'How can you lose to someone ranked lower than you?”, “You should die.”, and “Quit tennis.”

Social media is a very anti-social place. Sportspersons getting trolled isn’t something new, but over the years the social media has become a mucky place, where unscrupulous people lacking any sort of morals have been found launching scathing attacks on family members of athletes. A perfect example would be the social abuse faced by Bournemouth player Harry Arter. In January 2017, after the Cherries lost a three-goal lead to Arsenal to draw 3-3, non-league footballer Alfie Barker tweeted, “Big hype just for a disappointment like the nine months leading up to your child's birth."

You must have heard the famous meme phrase circulating on the internet, “that escalated quickly”. And one would be amazed to see how that is so relevant in online media. The latest example of that would be of MS Dhoni taking the ball from the umpire after India’s defeat in the recently concluded ODI series. In seconds, Dhoni’s potential retirement was trending on Twitter and it took one statement from Ravi Shastri to flush that whole idea down the gutter. While some had expressed their sadness to it, there were others who were immediately convinced Dhoni had taken the right decision after a disappointing series.

Shutting down the internet could be the only solution, albeit unrealistic and unfeasible, to counter it. Hence, WTA and ATP are taking the services of London-based Theseus, a company that works with athletes and entertainment figures, in dealing with such troubling messages where they will be told whether it can be simply ignored or is that serious enough to warrant alerting law enforcement. The names of the athletes have been kept a secret and neither will it be disclosed how often they felt the need to contact the police or other authorities.

An organization like Theseus could work effectively in every sport because every nation has different cyber laws and more so, cultures. While countries like Australia, UK or USA have provisions up to imprisonment for cases of online abuse, others like India, Colombia, or Sweden are still working on it. However, it would be a long process because the law would always be a step behind cyber offences. Issues like sharing sexually disturbing pictures of others without consent, or revenge pornography on social platforms have now been dealt fast by federal laws and are treated as a criminal offence by almost all countries. But, achieving a similar uniformity for not only sexual violence but mental harassments or death threats too, among all nations look a distant dream at the moment and organizations should hire specialists to tackle it from the inside.