I have received this from Raden Smith (see Follow up on Reddit trolls), and am posting it here at his request.
I am Raden Smith from Quora and I am writing this email to you to apologise for trolling on Quora and my online behaviour. I found your email id from your Quora account bio.
I want to tell few things about myself first. I got diagnosed with clinical depression in June, 2016 and I recently failed a major exam for which I was preparing since a year. Things have not been going on too well for me lately. I went to Quora to seek support. Then I got to know about the subreddit ‘indianpeoplequora’. And so I started to troll on quora and cross post it on reddit to gain karma points. My trolling on Quora and cross posting on reddit was simply a means of escapism for me, a way of coping up when things were not going on too well in real life. The Karma points I received on reddit boosted my esteem a bit. It was never my intent to hurt anybody.
Having said this, I have come to realise what I did was wrong. And I apologise for my behaviour and any hurt that I have caused. I have realised that there are better ways to seek support for depression and by trolling I am simply harming myself. I have also realised that failing in exam is not a death sentence and my failure does not give me right to troll others and I just need to prepare better and I too will pass the exam.
When I was small (like 5 – 6 years old) I always thought that I would grow up to be a nice person. However, when I look back on my online behaviour I feel ashamed. My smaller self would never have imagined that I would resort to such means as coping mechanism. I feel very ashamed about the way I behaved and I this is when I realised that I need to apologise.
I have deleted both my Quora as well as Reddit account. (I never trolled on Reddit though). I won’t be back online unless I am going to contribute positively.
I have also, as a means of repentance decided to make a donation to an NGO working in sector of woman welfare or animal welfare. I do not earn much so the amount of donation will be small. But I will donate for sure.
I would be grateful if you can post my apology as an edit to your followup blog post on Reddit trolling as I want to convey to people my apology. Kindly keep the email id anon please. This is my dummy email id but I regularly check it so we can communicate to this id.
I do not have email id of Reddit moderator but if you can pass on my apology to him I would appreciate if very much. I have abused the reason for which that particular sub reddit was created and hence I want to apologise to him.
If there is anything else that I can do let me know. If it is within my means, I will do it.