Why do people troll? Can we prevent trolling or limit the damage trolls do? Here are some thoughts on trollology derived from academic studies and web research.
Identifying Trolls
Trolls
divert online discussions into
non-productive, off-topic venues. They pose as part of a community only
to disrupt it. Trolling is anti-social behavior.
Some of the techniques trolls use to accomplish their objectives are:
- Pithy put-downs
- Name-calling and insults
- Ad hominem attacks that
try to negate an opinion by alleging negatives about the person
supporting it - Impugning other’s motives
- Emotional rants
- Bullying and harassment
- Completely off-topic posts
- Posting inaccurate “facts”
The traditional definition of trolling includes intent. That is, trolls purposely
disrupt forums. This definition is too narrow. Whether
someone intends to disrupt a thread or not, the results are the same if
they do.
For example, here at OS News,
the purposefully disruptive don’t get far.
The community self-moderates pretty effectively, and thumbs-up or
thumbs-down voting on comments supports this effort. Yet we do
see cases where people — who would
never consider themselves trolls — unintentionally disrupt threads
just as effectively those who would try to. Sometimes they offend
others with snappy
put-downs. Other times they question others’
intelligence or motives. Though not meant as trolling, the results are
the same.
Thoughtful discussions degenerate into insults.
Intentional trolls purposely
disrupt threads. Those who unintentionally
troll
do so without meaning to.
Motivations differ but the results are the same.
Why Do People Troll?
Let’s talk about intentional trolls.
Some are motivated by political, financial, or
ideological gain. For example, political trolls participate in forums
run by opponents to disrupt them. Sometimes this
takes the form of a concern
troll, a person who appears sympathetic to the cause being
discussed but who is
actually trying to sow doubt among the believers. In 2006 a Republican Congressional staffer
was forced to resign after he posted to liberal blogs as a Democrat who
thought the party should fold in the contest for his boss’s seat.
How about financial and ideological trolling? Trolls posted
falsely about a corporate buy-out at Yahoo
Finance that caused an
immediate 31% gain in the stock of telephone equipment
company PairGain. The hoax was quickly exposed and the stock deflated. Wired claims that anti-Scientology
protests sometimes take
the form of trolling. We’re all familiar with Linux trolls who
disrupt Windows threads, and Windows trolls who disrupt Linux
discussions.
Then there are the cases of astroturfing,
also called astrotrolling.
Whole Foods
CEO John Mackey was caught doing this. His anonymous self “quickly became
an outspoken regular on the board, praising and defending Whole Foods
with the equally enthusiastic virulence used to attack and shame the
company’s competitors and nay-sayers.”
Trolls sometimes defame individuals.One
victim was the late 60 Minutes
commentator Andy Rooney, whose name was signed
to a racist rant he didn’t write. Another was
John Seigenthaler, eminent journalist and former Kennedy aide, who
was implicated
in the Kennedy assassinations by a false Wikipedia post. The perpetrator was caught. Few of us non-famous
folks would have had the resources to counteract such “Internet character assassination.” Some trolls
even mock the dead and deface online memorials.
Claire Hardaker explores the psychological motivations of trolls in her
Ph.D. thesis Trolling
in Asynchronous Computer-Mediated Communication. She concludes that
“trolls intention(s) is/are to
cause disruption and/or to trigger or exacerbate conflict for the
purposes of their own amusement.”
Dr. Tom Postmes, Dutch professor of social psychology and book editor
of Individuality and the Group,
has a contrarian take. He argues that instead of contravening
social standards, trolls conform to them. It’s just that the social
standards to which they’re attuned are specific to a certain web
subculture.
Another way to consider trolling from is Dr. Phil’s viewpoint: People only engage in repeated behavior if
it pays off for them. What
is the pay-off for trolling? Experts and
online discussions cite:
- Attention and recognition, even if negative
- The emotional release of venting
- Power (the power to disrupt)
- Vandalism
- The thrill of breaking social conventions
- Sabotaging groups the troll dislikes
- Immaturity
Intentional trolls brag that they do it for the lulz. Their
braggadocio usually masks these reasons.
Unintentional Trolling
Most
of us have unintentionally trolled at one time or other. Perhaps we
posted while in a bad mood or under stress. Or we posted hastily or
without editing. We’ve all written something at 3 am that we might not
have upon reflection.
Where unintentional trolling becomes a problem is when a person
engages
in such behavior repeatedly because he doesn’t recognize that he’s
trolling. Some people think it’s cool to post snappy put-downs. Or they
casually question the intelligence or sincerity of others. Or they
name-call. Often these people would be surprised to be called
trolls. Yet when they post like this they are trolling just as surely
as the intentional troll. Why? Because
their
posts have the same effect. They sidetrack useful discussion into
offensive, heated exchanges. They destroy threads.
Some who repeatedly troll but don’t mean to lack social sensitivity.
Discussion requires give-and-take.
Some aren’t socially mature. Some can’t accept or handle
disagreement. We’ve all been too thin-skinned on occasion.
While most participants consider forums to be for the equal
interchange
of ideas, some people don’t. They see them as vehicles
to meet their personal needs. They place their needs above useful
interaction or concern for
others. Their motto is “I’ll post whatever I want, deal
with it.” This is a selfish understanding of social
interaction. If this isn’t obvious, try treating people like this in
real life. You won’t have many friends or much success in dealing with
people. Acting this way online has the same effects. It’s a form of
trolling.
Unintentional
trolling can be as destructive as the purposeful kind. “By their fruits
ye shall know them.”
How to Stop Trolls
The problem with trolling is that
a small minority can destroy a web site’s usefulness for the majority
of
well-intentioned, well-behaved participants.
Some web sites eliminate trolls by not allowing comments. For certain
kinds of blogs or online magazines this can be a good solution. But
for most sites this is unacceptable because it prevents the growth of
online community. At OS News,
for example, community is vital and much of the value from the articles
appears in the comments. Many other web sites have the same need for
reader participation; online forums wouldn’t exist without it.
A few web sites defeat trolls by posting only a selected comments.
Print newspapers followed this model for years. Advice columns come to
mind. The columnist selects a few reader comments to which to reply. No
others make print.
What do you do if you want to allow all comments but eliminate
trolling? One approach is to pre-moderate.
Only after a moderator approves comments are they posted. This is very
effective with competent moderators but it requires lots
of time. It also hampers discussion if it delays postings. Post-moderating comments
eliminates the time lag but still incurs the labor costs. Inappropriate
comments may get brief airplay.
Software can eliminate the labor requirement for moderators while still
imposing some order. The software has to integrate compatibly with the
comment software. For example, those with WordPress blogs can use tools
like Bad Behavior, Spam Karma 2, and Akismet. In my experience many
programs do better at stopping spam than policing trolls. Skillfull
trolls can outwit programs.
Many communities informally police themselves to curtail trolls.
The common maxim “Please don’t feed the trolls” argues that if troll
comments are ignored intentional trolls will leave and
go where they provoke results. “Don’t take the troll bait” works best
when
the bait is obvious and the forum participants are more sophisticated
than the trolls.
Forum participants can complain about trolls to board adminstrators.
Even
sites lacking hands-on moderation will often respond if they get
feedback indicating that trolls threaten the forum. Admins
can warn trolls and/or drop their user ids. IP addresses help identify
intentional trolls who post under multiple ids, or who create new ids
after their
original one is terminated. How effective these techniques are often
depend on the respective skills and persistence of the adminstrators
versus the trolls.
Some forums offer tools that allow readers to filter out troll
comments. killfile and filters on Usenet
discussion groups and the Ignore
function on some boards come to mind. OS
News features a specially-written thumbs-up/thumbs-down voting
mechanism that allows
users to vote down posts that are then hidden from the default view.
Individuals can set their comment threshold to suit their own
preferences. The
voting mechanism allows users to specify why they voted against a post (Inaccurate, Troll, or Off-topic). This enables the
collective wisdom of OS News readers
to reduce trolling.
One can think of many ways to fine-tune such voting mechanisms — but
at the
cost of increasingly complex and sophisticated algorithms. Here at OS News, readers offered
many good ideas on voting moderation systems in
response to Thom Holwerda’s excellent article On the Virtues of Comments.
With unintentional trolls, often just bringing inappropriate
behavior to their attention will solve the problem. After all,
they are not purposely being disruptive. Where I’ve moderated as admin,
I’ve found that polite but direct communication works best:
“We value your contributions but you need to be more
respectful of others in how you express them.” If someone won’t respond
to polite entreaties they are trolls (of whatever kind) and are stopped
from posting.
Intentional trolls are a different story. They won’t stop if you ask
them. They hide behind anonymity. Most would not post
the way they do if they were not anonymous. Thus mechanisms that
undermine
anonymity and enforce personal responsibility deter them.
Amazon deters trolling through a qualification
system. One has to qualify
in order to post. Their system requires personal information, a
verifiable email address, and a verifiable credit card. Other web sites
qualify commenters through paid memberships, technical quizzes, or
using real names in posts.
The WELL is one of the oldest online
forum communities. It maintains
a high level of discourse by requiring a paid subscription and the use
of one’s real name in postings. Most WELL comments can only be read by
fellow
members but there are designated exceptions.
Facebook and Google executives argue
that we should eliminate anonymity on the web. The cite trolling as the
reason but their real motives are commercial.
The problem with eliminating anonymity is that its benefits
outweigh the damage trolls do. Most people do not want
their real name on every comment they ever post, which would then
be
available to every person, corporation, or government entity for the
rest of their lives.
Even innocuous comments could have unanticipated consequences.
Whistleblowers and dissidents would be exposed and penalized.
Destroying privacy is not a solution to trolling.
Some countries have legislated against trolling. In the U.K., section
127 of the Communications Act 2003 says
it is an offence to send messages that are “grossly offensive or of an
indecent, obscene or menacing character.” Several people have been
jailed under its provisions. In the U.S., 1st Amendment rights make
prosecution for troll speech rare. But trolls take heed: all 50 states
have passed laws
against cyberharassment, cyberbullying, and cyberstalking.
The Bottom Line
Trolling isn’t going away. Yet there are some good techniques
to reduce trolling and its impact. Your ultimate recourse is to leave
a trolled forum and participate in a community more to your liking.
Unintentional trolling is an essential but overlooked part of the
problem. It is rarely discussed or even acknowledged,
which is why I’ve specifically identified it here. Sometimes
people troll and don’t realize it. Unless a forum can get them to
understand that their behaviors are inappropriate, those who
unintentionally
troll can do every bit as much damage to useful discussion as those who
troll with
malicious intent.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Read more on trolling in New York
Magazine‘s feature article
or in these profiles
of infamous trolls.
Howard Fosdick (President, FCI) is an independent consultant who
supports
databases and operating systems. His hobby is refurbishing computers as
a form of social work and environmental contribution. Read his other
articles here.
And you don’t know what you are talking about, kid.
I’ve fought in Vietnam and Korea and I know everything about life. You sir are a troll.
stfu n00b.
I have a PhD in trolling and 150 years of professional experience where as you are just some spotty basement dwelling teenager who probably thinks Nokia invented g33k spk.
meme.jpg
Wtflol i has ban butt0n fckng n00bz. biggest dcik right <–.
You’re just trolling nigga.
You are all Nazis, or maybe Goodwin… I keep forgetting.
Any link to prove your claim?
The burden of proof is on you, troll.
You remind me of the Nazis. What you are saying is exactly the same as the Communists.
Go educate yourself and get a shave, stupid American hippie pig. You are a terrorist and should be sent straight to Guantanamo. Are you gay or what?
PS: I reported your IP address to the FBI.
The man lays it on thicker than Vegemite on a Vita-Weat.
I knew Jack Troll, and you sir are no Jack Troll.
I hereby annex this thread in the name of the Lumber Cartel (there is no Cartel) and the Empire of Meow. All hail the almighty Fluffy. Let them eat Spam!
Hope This Helps!
(all we need now is good ‘ol fashioned cascade: http://www.atlasmagazine.com/michael/cascade.html )
The only time you ever fought was with your wife. And she won.
Some people simply troll because they enjoy it, it doesn’t need any higher or more complicated goal than that. And as long as they can find people they can successfully troll they will continue that, there is ALWAYS bound to be one or another sucker who falls for it.
Hell, even I do troll sometimes. It gives this nice feeling of fulfillment when you see your prey fall into trap, and that again twists your mouth into this self-satisfied grin just like can be seen on every photo of Steve Jobs.
Frankly I don’t think trolls are the problem, i really don’t. Obvious trolls are obvious and easy enough to spot and simply ignore. i’d say the bigger problem which seems to be spreading like a cancer is the “treat corporations like ballclubs” disease and the perception bubbles that come along with it.
We’ve all seen it, its the same disease that will make an otherwise rational person believe that apple can’t gets viruses and “thinks different’ or that Google really goes around saying “Do no evil” and is made up of nothing but nerds dedicated to making the world a better place.
this to me is the bigger problem because like religious zealots anything that threatens their perception bubbles will be attacked repeatedly and en masse. with any topic that has fanbois in attendance basically you end up with either karma whoring, where groupthink is the order of the day, or you get discussions quickly breaking down into giant flamewars. a good example of this is Slashdot which once was a geek paradise but now is losing members rapidly because the fanbois have taken over and its groupthink city there.
So I don’t think the big problem is your average troll but the fanbois because ultimately trolls are usually solitary creatures or at most small groups whereas the fanbois can be legion and descend like a plague to turn anything involving “their” company into a giant press release. It kills flow, ruins actual discussion and makes any sort of comparisons right out. I give OSNews credit for not having this cancer spreading like slashdot and many of the other geekier sites but its something i’m sure the mods have to deal with daily and i wish them luck.
Because once the fanbois take over its really hard to get a site back from that, again look at /. which has users making hundreds of accounts so they can modbomb and once the fanbois decide you are “the enemy’ they perception bubbles twist everything they see. Hell I was once accused of being a “M$ Ninja” and shilling for MSFT for saying IE sucks. I still haven’t figured out how saying a product was lousy equaled an endorsement of the company that made a lousy product but I’m sure to that fanboi and his followers that made some kind of twisted logical sense.
Sorry about the length but I just wanted to say how nice it is that OSNews still seems to allow opposing viewpoints and discussions without rampant fanboism destroying the flow and i hope they are able to keep it up. at least here one can have a 30 post discussion about file systems or OSes without a dozen ‘I hope you die!’ ‘Go choke you shill!’ posts ruining everything.
The whole idea of trolls is wrong… it’s just a term used by people on forums and in comments used when someone says something the other person dosn’t like or disagrees with.
What I find more annoying is when comparisons are made… and when someone compares a with b unfavourably… people use comparisons all the time… except when someone compares them in away that the other person disagrees with then let lose with the old “that’s like comparing apples with oranges” crap… some peoples dictionaries and education are seriously lacking if they think it’s not possible to compare an apple to an orange.
It is perfectly possible to express a controvercial viewpoint in a polite enough way that others will be willing to politely disagree and not mod you down.
Consider extremists like fundamentalists. I disagree with them. But I’m only irritated by those who are both insistent on bringing me to their viewpoint and completely unwilling to discuss it rationally. That insistence can turn into coercion, and it gets really bad. People who use politics to push their viewpoint into the educational system, for instance, are trolls. On forums, trolls do this by making everyone who disagrees with them out to be some kind of moron.
It takes some effort to color your words politely, and I don’t do it perfectly myself, but those who actually care about being heard will put some work into it. It’s not about being right or wrong. It’s about being NICE. I just don’t see the point of calling people names.
No it isn’t. No on the internet it isn’t.
http://www.amazon.com/You-Are-Not-Gadget-Manifesto/dp/0307269647
There is no other way I can say my piece IMHO than to be very aggressive otherwise I am ignored. It is very true.
Also the majority of people posting have absolutely no idea what they are on about.
The majority of articles on this website is written by someone who has no idea about Software Engineering practices or basic Ideas about Specifications and Testing.
I think Thom once had a go at me saying you can’t know what a application is doing if you don’t have the source code. In fact there is a whole field of testing called “Blackbox” testing that is dedicated to this.
If he read maybe some basic texts on the subject such as the “Art of Software Testing” (I have the first edition that talks about Fortran a lot).
It is honestly a sad state when you cannot express your opinion without basically having to be in someone elses face.
You are a lot less obvious with your example of trolling and you wrap it within some truths. Very well done.
Posting inaccurate “facts”,Pithy put-downs
Posting inaccurate “facts”, Emotional rants
Name-calling and insults
Ad hominem attacks that try to negate an opinion by alleging negatives about the person supporting it
Completely off-topic posts, Posting inaccurate “facts”, Ad hominem
Name-calling and insults, Ad hominem
Emotional rants
If I missed one I would like to know
You can’t troll a troll mate. :trollface:
I see your point. I don’t care much for it though.
But if you actually read the Q&A on the book, you might actually understand my motivations for being quite abusive sometimes on here.
Sometimes the only way to be noticed is to be a troll. Sometimes the other person is a f–king idiot.
Especially when you have the “hive mind”. I used to be the biggest “Freetard” there was back in 2004 – 2005. I used to use Linux (Slackware) and I used to argue tooth and nail about “freedomz”.
I started learning about Software Development in 2004. I remember seeing some guy trying to vain to connect his Gentoo laptop to wireless (and I was trying the same in Slackware) … the guy released his “homework” under a GPL license … and this got me thinking.
It has been a long Journey and I pretty much sit for 8 hours a day in front of a computer hacking things from PHP, C#, JS, Perl and a few other things, on my lovely Quad Core Xeon Workstation with dual 24 inch monitors … while listening to Heavy Metal and I get paid quite well for it. I also use a CentOS and OpenBSD VM if I need some *nix stuff (can’t be arsed with cygwin).
So when someone says you are an idiot and you are pretty sure they can’t write a line of code or don’t know some basic principles that are a well known facts .. you tend to get abusive.
I honestly don’t believe there are actually many on the internet in General commenting about tech articles or writing them that have even read some classic Software Engineering texts such as “Code Complete”, “The Art of Software Testing”, “The Mythical Man Month” and the “Tao of programming” (that load of rubbish seems to become more accurate on a day to day basis in the industry), I am sure there are a few more but I have missed them.
Edited 2012-01-26 19:13 UTC
If you haven’t actually read all of Howard’s article, I suggest you do.
There are intentional trolls who tick people off because its fun for them, and those that just suck at communicating without becoming emotionally involved.
One of the reasons why I visit this site, is because of its low troll count. There are people here I sharply disagree with on many things, but we do learn quite a bit from each other in a constructive dialogue.
Comon mate … I submitted an article and trolled Lemur2 upto 300 comments.
This is the internet. That’s comparatively a rare enough occurrence.
Reader comments on some sites are almost worthless because of this trolling problem and no moderation. Thanks for posting this article, it’s informative and points out a very obvious issue (sadly) most of us run into on a daily basis. The unintentional troll part is food for thought too.
Trying…
not…
to…
troll! AAAAAHHHHHH!
Hey! Troll off!
We can now troll and be on topic!
I can’t quite put a finger on it, but there is something wrong with equating two different means because they occasionally achieve the same end.
This needs more pondering.
Apologies; I modded your comment up as ‘funny’ rather than ‘insightful’ — muscle memory, I guess. Anyhow, I think I feel the same way; perhaps unintentional trolling should be responded to differently from intentional trolling. The effect of the two may be the same, sure, but I think that the remedy could be different; e.g., if I trolled you without meaning to, and you told me that you thought my comments were hurtful, I might say, ‘oh! sorry, I totally wasn’t thinking’ rather than waxing eloquent on how you’re a big baby or something.
After all the discussion on SOPA/PIPA/ACTA here comes a guy and tells us that we should all “select comments” or use “pre-moderation” because it is good for the quality of the discussion. Am I still reading the same site?
With such a broad definition as you propose, any opinion the site’s owner doesn’t agree with can be classified as “trolling”. Sure, with appropriate measures the “discussion” can look nice and tidy, as if everybody has agreed with everybody else. But, what’s the point of discussing a topic if you are never confronted with different point of views and opinions?
This is the reason why trolling, as it was originally defined, takes intent into account. Essentially anything except for vandalism and spam is exempt from it because no one can ever decide what is trolling and what is just an adversary opinion.
Point systems help (ideally users should +/-1 comments they read but it should be the authors karma that should be displayed next to it) but they aren’t perfect. Especially in niche communities which are biased because of their interests.
Anyway, my point is, let others express their opinions and accept some level of trolling as a fact of life. Sure, do eliminate vandalism and spam but other than that just focus on building the community, not on limiting it.
My response is that (a) we shouldn’t try to find a technological means to prevent trolling, because some trolling has a point and we need to protect free speech and that’s impossible anyhow, and (b) crowd moderation is also freedom of expression, so we should let the jerky trolls get modded down.
Remember, just because someone has the freedom to express themself doesn’t mean anyone has to listen to them. And that’s true regardless of whether or not they (think they) have a useful point to make.
Derren Brown produced an excellent show about this kind of phenomena. He reasoned that people lose their decency and inhibitions and act like morons when they can act anonymously in a crowd.
This is why perfectly nice, ordinary people troll online and why normal people can get involved in football violence.
He set up a fake gameshow, and everyone in the audience had to wear a mask over their face. They made decisions that affected a guy sitting in a nightclub who didn’t know he was surrounded by actors. For example, they could either vote for a hot girl to flirt with him, or a muscly guy to accuse him of looking at his girlfriend and start a fight with him. It ended with the entire crowd shouting and cheering as someone broke into the guy’s house and smashed his stuff with a baseball bat.
It was called “Derren Brown: The Experiments – The Gameshow”. If you’re in the UK, it’s on 4OD. If you’re outside the UK, I highly recommend you try and get hold of this show and watch it.
I’d agree fully that the feeling of anonymity lowers inibitions just like the drink and people suddely feel they can behave in ways they would never behave normally. It is the “Liquid Courage” of modern communication. We used to see lots of Keyboard Courage in the old BBS scene that preceded the popular explosion of the Internet scene. It can be seen in archives of the Usnet and other early mailing list forums.
I think people will generally exploit any medium that provides a sense of anonymity or abstraction from face to face conversation.
And sometimes people are just overreacting.
Everyone trolls. There is no exception.
And besides, i hate those lame forums where everyone is nice to each other. Thats utter BS. If you have passion about something you get worked up and a heated discussion might start. Its not a bad thing and people who cant deal with being called names.. well its the internet. Your fist cant reach through the screen and hit the opposites face. Belive me, most people who are insulting others havent the balls in the real-life to lift a finger when confronted. So there is no point in shitting yourself about some stupid insult from a mental 100 years old.
Gimme thumbs down suckers!
*Trolling mode off*
I believe you are thinking of masturbation.
OMG. An unintentional troll. Ban it, ban it, ban it.
Claiming someone is an unintentional troll is just an excuse for censorship. Thinking up complex excuses for doing what you want means you’re feeling guilty about it and want to shift the blame to someone else.
Mental masturbation ftw!
Yeah! It feels good to ejaculate your words into someones face. Even if it is a totally stupid subject, it can be very satisfying. The trick is that yourself shouldnt be pissed off about the excrements that other people might leave in a forum.
Means: dont get yourself offended about someone who tries to measure his e-peen. If you do, you got the smaller one.
I thought the same thing. An internet without trolls would be boring. Do we really want to create some sort of electronic Victorian diner party where everyone is stiffly polite to each other?
That would only stand if there were nothing else to do on the Internet besides troll.
Boredom, which can be a symptom of clinical depression, is no excuse for bad behavior. My personal boredom doesn’t justify me standing up in a crowded theater and yelling “Oh my god, he’s got a bomb!” just to see everyone scramble. There are other things I can do to entertain myself besides going out of my way to cause others grief (both on or off the Internet).
There’s a difference between being impolite and being destructive. Spreading disinformation and taking advantage of people for your own amusement isn’t simply being rude or impolite. You can be rude without doing such things.
Just because there’s a general rule against food fights doesn’t mean everyone’s out to get a Victorian dinner party going. Most people don’t care if you put your elbows on the table but catapulting cranberries at people wearing white shirts is going too far.
I’m not sure ones opinion can or can not “stand”.
Are you trolling?
And the sky is bright green with purple stripes, in my opinion. Because it’s an opinion I can’t be faulted even if the opinion is based on a fallacy. I’ll just call any attempt to point out the fallacy a “difference of opinion” to nullify the points I can’t counter.
Clever deflection. Now stop trolling and tell me how one’s personal boredom justifies unwelcome or harmful behavior.
Respond or don’t but unless you bring something meaningful to the discussion, I won’t be responding further.
Ah, there you can be productive by provocating. Sometimes you need poke the people a bit to get something useful out of them or even get some entertainment for the rest of the crowd.
I did this several times in the past and i really dont mind if someone is pissed.
For example, my wifes cousin is with the army. I just slandered against it without any reason (except to kill time). There he needed to justify himself and told me quite a few interesting facts about the duty and daily routines of a soldier which led also to a purposeful conversation.
When i asked him regulary with being polite, he didnt tell much. Just pretty generic stuff.
This logic applies to a lot of situations and i think it is good sometimes to take a provocative stance just to initiate some interesting discussions and reflections you usually wont get with agreeable or polite customs.
I see we’ve got a trolling mastermind in our midst. Bravo sir!
It might get too far, but if its funny for the moment, why not? In the end the guy throwing with the cranberries has to deal with the consequences and its up to him if it was worth the swollen eye (and sometimes it is).
And what consequences does one hiding in anonymity face? They’re just going to be destructive without consequence. So, I guess the analogy only holds if the cranberry chuckers actually have to deal with the consequences.
This is the great thing about the net. You can hide behind your nickname and do stuff you usually dont. For example:
Arab spring.
Imagine you will get arrested for an opinion or hey, lets call it regime trolling.
But i know what you are about. I dont mind if someone over the web tries to throw cranberries at me. Its called selective cognition. In the web if you dont want to read or react, you dont have to. If you feel like it, do it.
And that is f***ing great!
You want freedom? Then give freedom! Even to those who might annoy or offend you. This is a matter of principle and should apply to everybody.
They say not to feed the trolls, and sometimes you just have to let it go.
But there have been a few cases where my response appeared to be effective.
For instance, there are grammar/spelling nazi trolls. My response is something along the lines of, “The guy made a common mistake, this forum is not a peer-reviewed journal where you have to be particularly careful, and the rest of us were smart figure out exactly what he meant. Are you too stupid to work it out for yourself?”
Then there are the party poopers, and I respond with something about them being responsible for taking the fun out of having discussions in comments on forums. “It’s people like you who make the internet suck. Why do you have to make it your role in life to suck the fun out of everything for everyone else?”
In none of the cases where I have said such things have I gotten a response. However, It’s possible that I was being trollish a bit myself. I’m not sure. I don’t do this often, but a number of times, someone has just stuck out to me as being especially jerky and needed to be put in their place. No idea if it really had any positive effect.
I would actually find such a response extremely helpful if I ever got myself in such a situation, and would probably apologize for the original offense.
If the person can’t help making grammar mistakes it is alright. But often times the writer could write perfectly well but doesn’t care to put in the effort. This is not some throw away chat session where are few mistakes are okay. This will be read by a lot of people and it makes a statement that you actually don’t care that much about the discussion.
I completely disagree. I try to write correctly because I’m obsessive, but that’s my problem. The main thing is to not write total rubbish, so if you want to say something and you want to be understood and you want to not be a jerk, you’ll put a modicum of effort into making what you write presentable. BUT the fact is, forums like this are of only slightly more value than a chat session. They truly have no long-term value, or if they do, then the writer will turn around later and write a blog article about the same thing.
Posting to online forums is nothing but absolute faffing about. One may learn something now and again, and some of the comments are indeed insightful and interesting, but it is PLAY. This is not work. We do not earn money or even any kind of meaningful browny points from doing this. We’re just here to have a good time, like shooting the breeze at a pub or your local gaming club. The articles may be serious, but for most of us, reading them and especially for commenting on them, this is done purely for the enjoyment of it.
So if someone decides not to make a second pass over their comment to fix a mistake or two, then people just need to let it go. Especially if their point is still CLEAR. And even if it’s not, why do we care? Just ignore it and move on.
Personally, I have another dozen or so CS and EE departments I have to submit employment applications to, so I’m going to stop mucking about and do that now.
So, in other words, “putting in the effort” is the last thing we should be worrying about, because most of us have lives and work and stuff to do. While it can be edifying to participate in these discussions, obsessing over minor details of form is a complete waste of time and energy.
Of course, if you choose to expend your energy that way, that’s entirely up to you, and those of us who do read your comments will appreciate the cleanliness. But it isn’t anything I would recommend.
His 60 minutes pieces were designed to do everything a current troll does on the internet: Tick people off.
Even when someone like Ali- G tries to troll him, he really gets the upper hand. You can’t troll the troll master.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KglSPl7g14Q
The internet just makes this behavior easier than getting a spot on a major tv news show.
Brilliant insight!
That link, btw, is fantastic!
I don’t think trolling is much of a problem here. There is, however, a few individuals with extreme bias which tends to degrade conversation & debate. Additionally, there’s a lack of respect towards those who have opinions which differ from ‘your own’ or the common view.
Aside of the silly “troll” and “fanboy” finger pointing here, things aren’t that bad. Could be much worse for sure.
Lastly, I don’t believe any ‘karma’ or vote system will do any good. People will always vote negatively for those they dislike or disagree with. They’ll always vote positively for their ‘friends’ and those with like-opinions. This behavior has been proven a billion times over on a billion other forums.
Trolls are a myth. People who get called trolls generally fall in to one or more of these categories:
1) people who enjoy conflict or question everything
2) people who are passionate.
3) people that have trouble understanding an issue.
4) people who lack empathy/compassion.
5) people who do not respect others or their opinions
Most fanboi’s are passionate about their given subject. Some people like to argue and question everything (and this is very cultural). Most so-called troll attacks Would never happen without the anonymity of the Internet to shield the so called troll.
I could use a good, solid definition of what is and isn’t appropriate on the Internet, both to monitor my own commenting behavior and to have a better feel for whose “fault” it is when comment threads spin out of control. The problem with the definition in this article, however, is that while all the bullet points listed are clearly bad things that we’ve all seen before, they are also all judgment calls. I feel this article could use some examples of both inappropriate and appropriate posts. What is an example of stating your opinion or disagreement tastefully and respectfully? What is, in contrast, an example of doing it trollfully? I imagine there’d be disagreement as to what constitutes respectful disagreement and what constitutes inappropriate trolling.
The Internet is difficult. The lack of body language and facial responses makes it hard to know when you’ve crossed a line, and unfortunately, everyone’s lines are different. Unintentional trolling is not just caused by “immaturity” or “poor social skills”, but by cultural differences, or people who are not used to such emotionless means of communication.
I honestly think this is the first time I’ve ever heard someone refer to the internet as “difficult”! And yes, I laughed at that.
On to my actual question now.. Why in the world would you think people having different ‘lines’ is unfortunate? I would say it’s great as it’s essential to our personal development.
Not to get off topic, but, how ’bout dem Internet porns?
Good stuffs, huh?
I mean seriously, when you rack up over five hundred million dollars USD at the age of 26, were the first African in space (but white lolz), and while in space said ‘no’ to a terminally ill girl’s dying request…
What else is there to do with yourself? If you’re Mark Shuttleworth the best thing to do is buy yourself a Linux distro and spend the next decade trolling your users…
Wait…this is the trolling article, not the HUD menu replacement in Ubuntu? Ehhh…still works.
–bornagainpenguin
Through popular (mis)use, the definition of “trolling” has been broadened to the point where it no longer has any real meaning. Most of the things mentioned in the article are not actually trolling, at least not in the sense that the term was used when I was a regular poster on Usenet (where, to my knowledge, the term originated). In the simplest sense, “trolling” is when someone makes a post with the primary goal of generating angry responses (usually by being intentionally inflammatory). And if I remember correctly, it was partly a portmanteau of “troll” and “trawling” – as in, “trawling for replies”.
“Unintentional trolling” is a contradiction in terms IMHO – just being snarky or acerbic isn’t necessarily trolling. Flaming is not necessarily trolling either, though trolling can involve flaming. And a “true” troll usually doesn’t have any actual investment in the topic he’s trolling on – so astroturfing isn’t really trolling either (similar behaviour, but different goals and motivation), nor is being a fanboy/anti-fanboy the same as trolling. There’s no reason an astroturfer or a fanboy can’t ALSO be a troll, but I don’t consider the terms interchangeable.
There’s also the notion that trolling is inherently malicious and/or always has negative results – which I disagree with. On the unmoderated free-for-all that was (most of) Usenet, I would argue that trolls actually served something of a useful purpose: they were basically the “selective pressure” that weeded out the witless and the insufferably self-serious. For example, intentional misspellings were a common troll tactic to bait spelling & gammar-Nazis – falling for that a few times was enough to “cure” most wannabe-English teachers (even if only out of embarrassment).
And while some may see this as an extremely callous view, there are also at least a few people in any given forum who are so obnoxiously self-righteous & self-serious that they’re practically begging to be taken down a few pegs. At least on Usenet, trolling was often just about the only effective antidote – one of my personal favourite examples was the “olive loaf head troll”:
http://internettrash.com/users/adflameweb/2belo.html
In the above example, which behaviour is worse? Trying to get someone fired over a few fairly-mild insults posted online, or trolling that person by making them think they’d succeeded?
That said, I do think it’s possible to go too far with trolling (and flaming for that matter). Even on Usenet, most people frowned on things like death threats or accusing someone of a criminal act. Then there’s 95% the articles on EncyclopediaDramatica, which appear to written by people who believe that “trolling” is a contest to see who can be the most offensively-racist.
As for stopping trolls (at least the truly-malicious ones), the most effective strategy has always been simply ignoring them. But that flies in the face of the mentality that many online seem to have these days: namely, the belief that they have some fundamental right to never be exposed to anything that upsets or offends them in the slightest. That leads to people to respond by raging against trolls, which is just about the most counter-productive response possible. To a troll, that’s like holding up a sign that says “you were 100% effective in trolling me, please continue.”
1. They just don’t get how awesome Apple is.
2. They think everyone should live in their parent’s basement and type weird terminal commands.
3. They don’t realize that Media Corporations are people, too. They are part of a rising minority called Corporate-Americans.
4. They don’t understand Thom’s deep-seated resentment over the disappearance of BEOS.
5. They are confused by the fact that Bill Gates was able to have a relationship with a woman – a living, breathing woman!
6. They’ve never done the math – pirating music and songs and cost all of us Trillions of dollars.
7. They often misunderstand political issues and their impact on technology. For instance, Dick Cheney actually said there were instruments of math instruction in Iraq. Big difference!
8. They are just really honest people – they are not afraid to point out your obvious deficiencies.
9. When you are so many orders of magnitude more intelligent than everyone else, it’s hard to not let it show.
10. Ain’t nothing on T.V.
“The problem with trolling is that a small minority can destroy a web site’s usefulness for the majority of well-intentioned, well-behaved participants.”
Yes, indeed. Generating enough noise, or even I saw a group of people being constantly repulsive to the point that every decent individual left. And it was just them back, gee what a victory.
Identity seems to filter out ALOT of unwanted activity. Enable facebook-comments and the quality of comments seem to rise quite noticably.
Yes, why are people pretensious, and unnatural? AKA lamers.
Trolls, lulz, all belong to a certain jargon I don`t use. However often I call these people lamers, provocative, pretensious.
Troll seem to be a name of scandinavian origin. I am from here, and never used it still, really. I have heard it many times though, usually by people who dont respect a democracy and freedom of religion, and cry freedom of speech, when it suits them, but whenver you disagree with them, this pride of the west, is long forgotten, and they often seek to have your comments removed, or in some way defamed, so that what you say look out of context, and support something else, or rather their statement, or make you look bad. Provocateurs on the internet, bothering people, making them react, and in turn use their posts of “proving that they are evil” is something I have often seen.
But natural reaction should ofcourse always be what is supported.
One thing these people never seem to do, is share a positive experience of life, to build networks of humans, sharing their interests peacefully. Posting from real life, sharing the best, and maybe talking about trials.
Instead they seem to disrupt human contact. Disrupt, and claim some kind of superiority, and pretty much drag the converation down to the lowest and lust.
UNFORTUNATELY I also see people doing this in forums and channels for computer enthusiasts. However they seem very unprepared, and the thought of sex lures them, into behaving irrationally, and often taking the side of the offender.
As you all know I have a religious background, and identify this as “shaytan” and has always avoided it. Here I see a big loss for the disbeliever who is not prepared, and probably driven mental, by these sociopaths.
In the end, even disbelievers seem to learn too. I guess after the sex and the other new, they kind of return to themeselves and evaluate it, and maybe feel less of importance, of the sex they offer.
And then again some don`t, and have maybe been fooled into doing so much shameful tings, that they end up being a hopping mad shaytan themselves, knowing that they would be rejected by mainstream society, and end up channeling their hatred online, and becoming the hate-inciter, and problemmaker themselves, in some kind of statement of superiority to the world, and ofcourse complete denial.
Peace!
Edited 2012-01-25 19:59 UTC
You just look like jesus. Got a cross?
Edit:
Sorry, just cant help it. This kind of discussions and posting are tempting me…
Edited 2012-01-25 20:18 UTC
I guess you fit exactly the descriptions of “troll”. And the post was moderated down too. Yep, that happens even on OSNEWS, were you thought the level of intelligence should be too high.
But no. I guess somebody brought their fanboys, or someone is suffering dementia.
Edited 2012-01-26 01:22 UTC
Fascinating how a place as decent as Norway (and being one of most irreligious, one of most secular ones around, is certainly large part of this decency) still sometimes spawns somebody like you …oh well, allowing such rare (a dying breed, really, at least in average decent place) instances is a necessary inconvenience / a price to pay, the best of acceptable approaches, if given place should remain decent (or if it strives to be on the road to become such)
In opening post here you write…
Eh, how incoherent and in denial of simple facts you can be… (just a recent example: http://www.osnews.com/thread?504199 “thank you for reminding me of why it’s bad idea enter into debate with anyone who thinks that “lol” is punctuation”)
BTW, this one – in isolation – would make me think you are some kind of comedian
(albeit a quite poor / weird one…).
But even on some rare seemingly non-wacky posts – such as this recent one http://www.osnews.com/thread?504259 – you still can’t help sounding a bit condescending (while essentially missing the point). Overall, it seems you have a hard time writing a post without overt insults; you are the one fairly reliably not “well-intentioned, well-behaved”; pretentious. And the way you tend to end such drivel with “Peace!” …seriously, Orwell couldn’t make this up.
PS. “Troll” (internet one) comes more from trolling for fishies, BTW, not from some ancient mythologies and religions …but I can understand your confusion, seeing as you don’t really know much about them.
Edited 2012-02-02 00:13 UTC
Windows sucks, Linux sucks, OS X sucks.
Brynet trolled…
Dude! How dare you say Linux sucks!!!111111eleventy one
–bornagainpenguin
Bloomberg had an article on the business of moderating.
I did not know moderating is such a big business.
http://mobile.businessweek.com/magazine/comment-moderator-the-dirti…
Statistics from this is that nasty comments make up about 10% of what appears online, and some companies charge up to $50 000 to moderate some big sites.
Edited 2012-01-25 21:27 UTC
When i see trolling on osnews I realised that some of the smart, elaborate responses here is not forthcoming unless properly incited.
This is the answer we all are looking for:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
This is the only site I visit where the original articles themselves are trolls. Seriously, look back at some of the article titles and well… It’s pretty obvious.
Perfect example:
“Apple Reports Bizarre First Quarter Results”
Apple has one of the best quarters of any company in history and TH calls it “Bizarre”. Now there’s a troll for ya!.
Bizarre is negative now? Isn’t it just an exclamation of wonder?
No, look up the meaning!
This is all just a bunch of frosty chocolate milkshakes
Trolling is merely adopting whatever position will annoy people. It doesn’t mean that someone with a point of view that annoys you is necessarily a troll. And what if he is? If his point of view annoys you, clearly it means that he has a point that you can’t or are unable to refute.
One issue I have with that whole “trolling must stop” thing is that often, people will abusively label “troll” anyone they don’t agree with or who have an opinion so different from their own that they refuse to acknowledge it and instead reject it as trolling.
“you have to be trolling” is one of the most annoying cop out in a forum discussion.
Note that simply being insulting or offensive is not trolling. Trolling is often pretty much nothing more than playing devil’s advocate.
If getting your opinions challenged annoys you, then perhaps you should avoid engaging in discussions with people on the internet.
Edited 2012-01-25 23:30 UTC
… but then I took an arrow to the knee.
A lot depends on what you consider the goal of comments to be.
If you’re a serious person and look to comments to learn and become informed, you’ll agree with the author and align against intentional and unintentional trolling.
If you’re a more light-hearted sort who looks to comments for entertainment, you won’t much be concerned about trolling.
***Warning: I give personal accounts and examples I’ve experienced in the topic of politics. I am not trying to start a debate, I’m using examples to get to a point. Please stay on topic.***
This article itself is itself a troll by it’s own definition. To believe oneself to stand aside so much that their opinion is right (like gay marriage for instance, of course it should be okay to do, but to give government power over lives of people who are already free? That is a debatable topic, yet I’ve been called a troll for that. As a homosexual, I find less government intervention has been a blessing on me and I uphold my values I was raised with in high regard.)
You see, what people do not seem to comprehend is the great tragedy of life. The things we believe of others, is what we truly believe of ourselves.
To call one a troll is to oneself a troll in return. Our outlook on life and the way we attach to things are what derive our personality. Hence, the things we say are first a result of the thoughts we think, a product not of society, but of being duped by the thoughts of others. We can be lead into thinking a person could be bad just because they look ruffed up, they may just be homeless and nice (usually homeless people don’t want anything but food, if they want money they’re not homeless, trust me on this one, seen it with my own eyes).
This is much like the idea that “The GOP is racist, sexist, and homophobic” when they have a large amount of people who are republican right that are black, gay, and female. I’ve heard Democrats say over and again how they’re sexist (Wasserman Schultz) and other quotes like hers, and it’s pure bigotry and obvious lies. Yet regardless of how obvious the lie, many people will believe it because everything else they say they like hearing. Again it’s a matter of proof if they do the things they say, which often they do not.
So the question is this: is trolling really trolling? Or is it the “star child” of conversation? If people can follow a topic and stay on track, things turn out well.
When one is called a troll (or a variety of other names), the conversation is over in favor of said “troll” because the discussion was lead to name calling. This is seen by the “troll” (again this person having favor and focus of the conversation) as a sign the person isn’t serious about continuing a conversation, and in my case as a gay republican, I’ve met a lot of people who aren’t serious about the discussion of the future of our nation, among other things.
Edited 2012-01-26 10:46 UTC
While I agree with most of the article, I am not sure about countermeasures. I like downvotes, but this opens another form of trolling.
Also I want people to be confronted with stuff like non-facts. It means that you should better check stuff on your own and not take things as granted. This is especially important for democratic societies.
I think the best counter measure against everything is society. An example. If society doesn’t like smokers and drug abuse in general, don’t call it hip and rebellious, but disgusting and weak. After all you depend on and even are kinda enslaved to a piece of crap and its producers. On the other hand simply don’t give them attention.
As the article says trolls are immature. Children (and also adults) usually want attention, so simply not giving them any for bad stuff will make them do something else. It’s a simple form of punishment that actually is not awarding certain behaviors.
It’s how peer pressure works. Societies simply reward certain behavior with attention and recognition. It’s also why some people, like managers sometimes become greedy and amoral. Society rewards it with money and financially successful people get lots of rewards and praise.
See the US presidential election. Being a successful businessman was a plus, not paying a lot of taxes is a minus. Even though trolls also want to influence things somehow. You won’t get rid of them, so lets just deal with them.
It’s pretty obvious that a few people or someone (maybe with multiple accounts?) spent all their comment votes to systematically downvote every post going down the list……..because they were trolling.
Well played.
First of all ask yourself what is the definition of trolling?
For me it is not obvious. Trolling is subjective and more importantly what is trolling is stochastic and depends on what percentage of people mark something as trolling (true or false).
In order to stop it you must define it.
The Onion had the best idea:
New Decoy Website Launched To Lure Away All Moronic Internet Commenters
See: http://www.theonion.com/articles/new-decoy-website-launched-to-lure…
SAN JOSE, CA—With funding from dozens of news outlets and media companies, the groundbreaking Outkube.com launched this week, providing an online destination where pandering and incendiary content is used to lure moronic Internet commenters away from all other websites.
According to sources, Outkube boasts thousands of articles and forums carefully crafted to draw in dim-witted web users and effectively quarantine obtuse, uninformed comments on topics such as gay rights, Ryan Gosling, the threat of Sharia law in the U.S., health care reform, whether Kobe is better than LeBron, Jewish control of the government and media, the New York Jets, the Second Amendment, and professional wrestler John Cena.
Most stories on the site are reportedly preloaded with several witless and profanity-laden comments specially designed to incite retaliatory remarks…
You’ve just got to love The Onion.
I have been using the perfect counter-trolling method for a while now. It works wonders.
Instead of simply “do not feed the trolls” you just have to take it one step further and Love and Tolerate the heck out of them. (with emphasis on love) You either turn their arguments into a decent conversation, or you embrace it and make small talk about how their comment has good points while still showing that you disagree with it.
Warning: link contains ponies: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfW6ym1QDvw
They absolutely hate it. They make no progress, get bored, and leave.
Problem is… Not enough people know to do this. Not even enough bronies that you would expect to do this do this. For example: After some troll/hater couldn’t make me mad by trying to stereotype me – even at moments he was right – he stopped commenting on my status, and went after someone else… who thought one of the things the guy said was a death threat. (it wasn’t) EMBARASSING FLAMEWAR ENSUED.
Due to that… the next time I seen a situation was about to start another flamewar, I prevented it.
Also starved off hatred on an imageboard that I used to be a mod on by making a very very clever suggestion. Lasted a month – the admin liked the idea and never got around to implementing it. And that was on a site that has a community that’s critical of EVERYTHING.
I am gooood at this, aren’t I?
Seriously. This is the internet and trolling is a part of it, because people are more confortable doing it ON THE INTERNET. I don’t see that as a problem. The liberty guys shall not whine about trolling, since they are against censorship as in any essence of censorship. Right, OSNews?
There’s nothing inherently wrong with trolling. It’s an expression of a particular viewpoint — however irreverent or wrong or correct — and if you can’t handle seeing someone express their opinion (even if you don’t agree with it), you shouldn’t be online. This domain doesn’t belong exclusively to you — or to people that you agree with. If you don’t want to feed trolls, ignore them.
People who troll online just don’t have big enough balls to troll in real life.
Do you troll in real life? On the internet it will get an IP ban at max. In real life you can lose quite a few important things. So no, I don’t think your statement is true. It’s idiotic to troll in real life. But I met those. Nobody is free from the sin of trolling on the net. Just seat down, relax and do some trolling every once in a while. It serves the purpose to heat up some cold and pointless discussions, because people don’t want to talk about certain things, let’s say… about cancer… or how they think they are going to die.
Edited 2012-01-30 00:02 UTC