Most people would agree a troll is someone who exists in an internet community solely to cause trouble and make people angry.
Sometimes it's obvious. If a thread in /anime/ is titled "Gook Cartoons are for Little Girls and Social Deviants", it's pretty clear this is a troll, because this board was intended for fans of the genre and they shouldn't have to defend what they enjoy in such a place.
In a board like /politics/ however, we can't ever really call anyone a troll. Most posts have the potential to make someone angry or seem ignorant thanks to the natural human instinct to filter out information that contradicts our world view.
When it comes to religion, every post will be a troll. Any discussion is impossible when dealing with something so tied into self-identity. Walking up to someone and saying "there is no god" or "you will go to hell when you die" is no different than saying "you're a fool and a liar, you've wasted your life in a fantasy world, and your grandfathers corpse is being eaten my maggots" or "you're a disgusting evil person and deserve to suffer while I watch and laugh and eat popcorn". All statements are as true and valid for someone as the color of the ocean but are still deeply offensive and sure to tear people apart and drive some to see red and then black and wake up next to a bloody hatchet. But deleting anyone of them is censorship.
How can we say someone is a troll without knowing his intentions?
You can tell right off the bat, but it just needs experience being a troll (to understand a troll, you must be one). Otherwise, you'll just be left in the dark. You could be trolling using this topic as bait. I could be trolling using this post as bait. Just waiting for a casual user to post something idiotic so I can mark the back of my laptop with another kill. Trolls are trolls. The intention is to get people pissed off or worried while gaining attention to these people.
I thinnk most trolls tend to go for easy and uncreative targets. Popular topics (and fans), sensitive topics/people and idiots are probably what I identify as very easy targets. You just need to say something that will either obviously or in a direction that would make people pissed off. Sometimes only a slight push from a person who might not have trollish intentions will set off a shitstorm when it comes to these three. Also people who troll places by spamming NSFW disgusting pics can be placed in this category as well as grief players in multiplayer games (My favorite was getting a hylozoist card and mass produce polymorphing monsters in newbie areas into MVPs and similar on Ragnarok private servers to piss off admins). These trolls are fairly common and comprise of most of the internet trolls. They're assholes.
The special cases are those who start creating hoaxes in order to create shitstorms. It's only a level up, but they put some actual effort rather than being simple pricks. The pranks they pull can be simple, short-lived memes, to elaborate shitstorms causing controversy outside of the net. These trolls are bored geniuses (bonsai kitten) or cold hearted pricks (myspace moms getting random teenagers to commit suicide) depending on how malicious their pranks are. Sometimes these trolls will just start a topic/prank and let the userbase get into it with a minimal, but well planned effort. I'll just call them classholes for the sake of xkcd familiarity.
As for censorship: I think it's fine. If a website decides to start deleting certain statements, then that's fine because websites are either government or private property which both have legitimate reasons as to censor (objectable opinions, sanctity of the website, user base). However, I don't like censorship relating to politics and world interaction by the media (news, information services) for selfish gains as it would be equivalent to lying to people. Censorship is actually a fun tool to troll with, however. Start up a trolling post on a forum with some weird topic ("Men are useless" from personal experience, I am a guy that wanted some cheap laughs), then start deleting posts that are not in favor of the view in the OP.
ingredients for one troll: disapproval of the world
desire for recognition
intelligence to recognize anger and how to incite it in others.
i find trolls don't put effort into thoughtful posts, seeing the effort not worth the return. unthoughtful posts i skip, but i think that's off topic.
censorship's okay so long as users are allowed to travel to new lands (establish their own nation or establish their own website). i don't however think its the best approach, as rumors of censorship travel quick and discourage as well.
A miserable little pile of secrets!
>>4
Actually, yes. Trolls are second-rate humans who are full of miserable little secrets.
>The pranks they pull can be simple, short-lived memes, to elaborate shitstorms causing controversy outside of the net. These trolls are bored geniuses (bonsai kitten) or cold hearted pricks (myspace moms getting random teenagers to commit suicide) depending on how malicious their pranks are.
Also this. It should be noted that for the 'bored genius' type, these pranks are generally harmless (offending sensibilities, not actually causing physical harm/extreme emotional distress). and take very little effort. However, the sadistic sort of folk lives and breathes these things, and they are a disgusting sort of deformation to humanity. They will never become more than the sum of their twisted delusions, and deep inside (underneath some of the secrets) this haunts them.
I used to be a rather nasty troll. I got people's sites taken down, IRC channels k-lined, etc., I was that bad. It's a great way to learn a lot about human nature, but it's got the disadvantage of all that negativity coming home to roost when you realize you haven't got a friend left in the world. It's lonely at the top of a shitheap.
Socretes refered to himself as a "gadfly" - he proviked arguments in people like a fly bites a horse.
Trolls may be annoying, but they reflect ideas and concepts which are really offensive. They make us question taboos and why we don't like certain things. Sometimes its good to play devils advocate.
Often playing the devil's advocate in debates, I know for sure that there is a thin line between a devil's advocate and a troll. I think it is marked by a certain dash of sadism, which makes people act this way not for argument's sake but just to piss people off. Also, a common topic amongst trolls, as >>6 noted, is the observation of human nature - it's almost a social study tool.
In fact, trolls sometimes are like these kids that set fire to ant nests just to watch how the little creatures will react. A kind of pathetic and malicious curiosity - but still, curiosity.
This might be of your interest...
A newborn Social Sciences & Humanities imageboard.
http://www.imageboard4free.com/board/science/ssh/
Trolls are important to maintain the status quota of the internet.
>>1
You confuse trolling with telling the truth. You are not trolling when you tell the truth. At most you're babbling - "you suck you're ugly 1 + 1 = 2", two insults <<babbling>>, and one truth.
That makes no sense.
The fact that you're ugly is conclusively proven through several mathematical formula and a double blind testing of the shock-and-withdrawal reaction your malformed face has on young children.
The fact that you suck is demonstrated by this picture of you sucking, taken by a private eye i hired.
Point being, truth is often subjective and in many cases true opinion can not easily be separated from flame baiting without culling honest debaters and pardoning talented trolls.
> That makes no sense.
Why is it nonsensical?
> The fact that you're ugly is conclusively proven through several mathematical formula and a double blind testing of the shock-and-withdrawal reaction your malformed face has on young children.
For which definition of "beauty" does this prove that I'm ugly?
> Point being, truth is often subjective and in many cases true opinion can not easily be separated from flame baiting without culling honest debaters and pardoning talented trolls.
Flaming is something pointless, and trolls take advantage of that. Stop flaming, or in the general case, stop caring about who says what, but only for this which answers "what", and trolls will suddenly disappear.
> Why is it nonsensical?
That truth and trolls are mutually exclusive, or that truth has anything to do with trolling besides the dishonesty of intention. The entire post makes no sense to me, because I have no idea what you are referring to when you say "You confuse trolling with telling the truth".
> For which definition of "beauty" does this prove that I'm ugly?
>Main Entry:
> beau·ty
>Pronunciation:
> \ˈbyü-tē\
>Etymology:
> Middle English beaute, bealte, from Anglo-French, from bel, beau beautiful, from Latin bellus pretty;
>1: the quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit : loveliness
And so we can conclusively prove ugliness by measuring (negative) external reaction to sensory stimulation. If it's true that you're ugly, it's still an insult. Whether it's a troll or not is up in the air, the insult could be in response to a troll.
> Flaming is something pointless... Stop flaming
Good advice for all rational people.
> trolls will suddenly disappear.
Somehow I doubt it.
> That truth and trolls are mutually exclusive, or that truth has anything to do with trolling besides the dishonesty of intention. The entire post makes no sense to me, because I have no idea what you are referring to when you say "You confuse trolling with telling the truth".
You could had simply said that you don't understand me, and ask me to rephrase, which I will do now:
When I said that you confuse trolling with telling the truth, I mean the act of trolling with the act of telling the truth. As such, you'd wrongly blame someone who tells the truth as a troll. That is because your definition of trolling is more than it should be.
> Walking up to someone and saying "there is no god" or "you will go to hell when you die" is no different than saying "you're a fool and a liar, you've wasted your life in a fantasy world, and your grandfathers corpse is being eaten my maggots"
Actually, you're right, it is the same in the sense that both are unjustified opinions. In the first case, I will ask you "What evidence do you have that supports your case?". In the second case, I'd question "How do you know?". Ie, in both cases I'd ask for evidence, which you probably are unable to provide. You could had said this instead:
"It's possible that you're a fool and a liar and that you've wasted your life." and I'd answer "Yes, it is possible".
Or "It's possible that a god doesn't exist." (you'd also have to define god), and I'd answer "Yes, it's possible".
> And so we can conclusively prove ugliness by measuring (negative) external reaction to sensory stimulation. If it's true that you're ugly, it's still an insult. Whether it's a troll or not is up in the air, the insult could be in response to a troll.
Enough with the stupidity, beauty can't be measured because it is subjective. Uglyness is a subjective quality, there's nothing to "prove" like you suggested.
>>15
I think understand a little better where you're coming from, but I still don't seewhere truth or falsehood comes into play. I'd say it's irrlevent because I'd say...
> ....a troll is someone who exists in an internet community solely to cause trouble and make people angry.
In which case anything goes if it helps the troll cause a flamewar or fragment a tightly knit community.
I wouldn't call anyone a troll because to know for a fact someone is a troll you'd have to know their intentions... so unless they've announced themselves beforehand
> Uglyness is a subjective quality, there's nothing to "prove" like you suggested.
I stand by my belief that the physical appeal of a person can be relatively measured through the reactions of his or her cultural peers.
>>7, Socrates was a gadfly because he constantly asked "why?" in countless variations. The man played devil's advocate, and he was hurtfull because he questioned everything a person stood for (which if you haven't noticed is a little taboo itself). He provoked arguments because logical dialectic is a pursuit of knowledge.
Anyhow, trolls reflect hurtfull things, but they are nothing like a calm question. They are neccessary to make us question, but still, a true troll never will. Question, that is. At least, not to those they are bugging.
The problem with REAL trolls is when a person comes along and says something actually truthful and/or interesting or a good opinion, that is where the downmodders/tools come from.
Head over to /r/apple in Reddit and say Jobs should have never released the iPhone 4 and watch those tools wreck your karma. Or head over to Digg and link to videos of Palestinians being killed or their homes bulldozed and watch the Digg admins kick you out.
Those are the REAL trolls.
Trolls, at least those that use shame as a weapon, are necessarily inherently conservative because of the consensus-based nature of shame. They are by nature reactionary and resentful. No real change can be effected through trolling.
Trolls are heinously anus
down we go