Sociopaths

There's a breed of players apart from the rest, and I call them sociopaths, as I prefer to employ erudite phrasing and reject the typical appellation of "troll".

As you may have read, very early on, while mining for Jaspet in lowsec, my venture mining vessels were blown to smithereens...twice in two days, and I was pod-killed both times, once by a sec -9,8 from his Wolf's 200mm AutoCannon II, and once by a -10.0 Tornado tier III battlecruiser with 1400mm Prototype Siege Cannons.
As a side-note, I have to applaud how far bureaucracy has come in the x amount of millennia between our life and New Eden. I received messages about my new clone being ready to use and my ship insurance payout before I even saw my vessel start to explode.

These players had nothing to gain from killing me, as even if I'd had a bounty on my head, 20% of a newbie's venture would be very slim pickings, and salvaging my carcass? Pfft, pitiful lowtech gear.
Some time later, another would-be griefer set a 10 million ISK bounty on my head without ever even meeting me, and yet another one set a 20 million ISK on my entire corporation.

It's an endemic and well documented internet phenomena:
normal person + anonymity + audience = complete fuckwad.

image credit goes to Penny Arcade

Now, I could be angry at the fact that these people to even exist, I could mourn the loss of my ships, but frankly, they played me an instrumental role in teaching me a lesson: Don't go into low-sec unprepared  for people will fuck your shit up! Just like Hollywood has taught me to stay away from places where black people dwell, because they slouch while walking and talk using peculiar language. Something about caps in asses, and cracked coak ain, and peacey pea which I don't fully understand, but sounds delicious! I have to remember to not write while hungry.

Surprisingly, trolls and the general penchant of humans for evil and personal profit at the expense of others is a very well integrated mechanic into EVE's universe. Don't make verbal contracts with strangers, don't step over the line, keep your head down. If you want to be safe, don't ever trust anyone and don't leave 1.0 sec systems.
But where's the fun in that? Life, and by extension, Eve Online is about experiences. Adventure, even! If you stay cloistered up in high-sec space, and do drab NPC missions to no end, you'll be as bored as a cactus in a pot farm...okay, that simile made no sense. You'll be as bored as a dentist in a Hollywood movie (see, because all the actors have perfect teeth?)...okay, I give up on comparisons.

Moral of the story: evil people are more useful than you may think!