Why Trolls and Flames Happen

AnonymousHack writes "New Scientist examines why people are in general more rude and abusive online. 'Psychologically, we are "distant" from the person we're talking to and less focused on our own identity. As a result we're more prone to aggressive behavior' says one psychologist, who also cites research showing messages received by email are always perceived more negatively than on the phone." Just more proof for the Greater Internet F***wad Theory.

USENET Trolls, among others

[ackthpt]

There is a newsgroup, perhaps not too unlike many others, where a troll has taken up residence. He insults members and has found some method of posting every few minutes a lot of gibberish under various names and forged addresses.

This person is a degree or two off the usual troll who just likes to make some preposterous post and watch people take the bait and go. This one is actively trying to destroy the group with crap-flooding and there appears little members can do about it. There's also some halfwit posting MI5 [google.com] crap across many newsgroups. Alas, Google News doesn't appear to allow filtering. Does reporting abuse every work?

Some newsgroups are still alive and thriving, but others seem to be losing regular posters to blog sites, I expect because they are freed from the harrassment of trolls, spammers and crapflooders by a moderator who will simply delete their garbage.

My ISP had a NEWS server, but shut it down for economic reasons and pointed out I could just use Google News. Feh.

I've given some thought over the weekend whether USENET can survive and whether anonymity also can survive. The more people abuse a system, the less eventual resistance there will be to the heavy hand of moderators or even government. I expect at some point bills requiring tagging and tracking of every email and every post on the internet being required by law with few people actually coming to the defence of anonymity, because they have had their own fill of trolls an crackers. It may come in on the wind of some means of fighting terrorism or protection of IP (a la RIAA & MPAA, among others) but it will encompass all.

Anonymous Cowards enjoy the present. I think the trolls are undermining us all and they really don't care if they lose anonymity and privacy, they're called trolls for a reason.

Lastly, no, this isn't a troll. Notice I didn't post anonymously. I am genuinely concerned about this as I lament the ills befalling open forms such as USENET and email.

Hmmm

[HairyNevus]

Does this mean every flame and troll post in this thread will get modded +1 Insightful for demonstrating the principle of the article?

More **everything** online

[EmbeddedJanitor]

The faceless experience of being online is not just limited to rudeness, but other behavior too. People who would never buy porn at a newsstand will surf porn. People who would never go naked on a beach will pose naked for online dating.

This is all to be expected. "Civilaised society", whatever that means, comes from feedback. That feedback is significantly reduced by a computer interaction or by excessive alcohol etc. resulting in less inhibited behaviour online or when pissed.

Re:Duh.

[istartedi]

You haven't really achieved anything on Slashdot until you've ended up with a final moderation of (Score 4, Troll).

Re:Duh.

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Why is this cocksucker in new SCIENTIST? If this is the way things are going, I want the Mother Fucking OLD SCIENTIST back!

Is it another sign of the decline -faith-based, pseudo-science- under the rule of Caligula Bush?

The Thomas Friedman "worst, most boring kind of middlebrow horseshit" [buffalobeast.com] seems to have completely sucked the last gasp of life out of any significant intellectual effort in the public arena.

Psychology is a hard science too!

[steveoc]

When I was at uni (bach maths sci degree) .. i took a 1st year course in psychology, mainly because I was young and single, and there were no hot chicks in the other mainline science subjects that I was already enrolled in (physics, stats, astronomy, chem and maths)

Whilst I was fascinated with the impossibly hard questions that my chosen fields of study were setting out to unravel and comprehend ... psychology was interesting in as much as it made use of a lot of statistical analysis as a form of proof. However, the questions that Psychology was attempting to answer were as lame as dishwater, especially compared to the great unanswered riddles that one finds in, say, physics or maths.

And yet somehow, professional Psychology academics would manage to get substantial grants to go ahead and prove such theories as "If someone is smacked over the head every day for the next 5 years, then they are more likely to believe that they are going to get smacked over the head tomorrow - compared to someone who has never been smacked over the head at all". Such theories could be proven (at great expense mind you) using the most thorough and rigorous statistical analysis.

Woop Dee do.

I made a comment to the head of the Psych department that Psychology was nothing more than the vieled scientific study of the completely fucking obvious. My grades in this particular subject towards the end of that year reflect that fact as well. Some of the other students in my psych group who handed up almost verbatim copies of the same written work during the same period predictably fared better in their marks.

OK then, so now we find that you can take a normal person off the street, give them anonymity and an audience - and viola - without the constraints of dealing with people face to face, with no embarrassment to deal with, they tend to get obnoxious. And this is news ? The big question is - how many months of study, and how much grant money was sucked up in proving this most valuable theory ?

Its amazing that we ever managed to build the pyramids, discover mathematics, communicate wirelessly across the globe, understand the quantum states of the atom, put a man on the moon, or map out the human genome .. before this greater internet fucktard theory was ever proven.

Where would we be without Psychology ?

Re:More **everything** online

[Andrewkov]

Same reason people will cut you off on the road, but not at the grocery line. Being distant and anonymous makes people feel less empathy, or something. Maybe people only act politely when there is a chance that they will be called on their behavior?

One theory, but...

[MWoody]

There's an even simpler explanation for why the Internet tends to be full of fucking idiots: kids. Young people, in real life, are generally ignored by adults who aren't specifically responsible for their care, and so most people don't realize that if you just listen to what they say, they're insufferable little pricks. But on the 'net, with anonymity added, these worthless little rugrats are suddenly on equal footing with adults. They go nuts with the power to insult people who would, in an actual meeting, ignore them entirely. And not knowing that they're arguing with a 12-year-old, the adults just think that the guy/gal on the other end is a total fuckwit, instead getting upset and unhappy as if they'd had an argument with another adult.

Next time you're dealing with some Internet troll, don't get angry. Just bring to your minds' eye the truth: it's a junior highschooler angry at his lack of power in his own life and taking it out on the Internet community. It's a lot less frustrating when you see it as kids being kids.

This, incidentally, is why I favor privacy, but not total anonymity. Either keep kids out of the online arena entirely or label them somehow; they bring down the maturity of the discussion as a whole.

Re:Duh.

[raidfibre]

You're obviously a neo-fascist Hitler humper.

QED

Re:One theory, but...

[pragma_x]

I agree, but I personally extend the definition of "kids" to include fully-grown adults with the social and reasoning capabilities of the latter. Just talk to anyone who works retail; you don't need pimples to make an ass of yourself. I'd wager there's quite a few of those people get around online too. *sigh*

FWIW, I have found that Slashdot is a wonderful haven away from most of these types as the story content is either too impenetrable for these types, or the commentary too insufferable. ;)

To see what I'm talking about, just cruise digg.com for stories that have been cross-posted here, and behold.

Re:How does that happen?

[VJ42]

When you get mod points you can also select "underrated" and "overrated" which just add or remove one from the current score without changing the modifier. So a post that starts at 2 and gets a one troll and four underrated mods will end up at (5, troll).

hmm

[GregNorc]

We are operating under the basic assumption people who are assholes online are not assholes offline.

I see rudeness everywhere, not just the internet. From the tailgater on the highway, to the woman cutting me in line at the grocery store, to the teenager on her cell phone while I try and enjoy a movie, rudeness is everywhere. People make a big deal that credit card information on the internet will be used by hundreds of crooks within minutes, but do you really think if you laid your wallet down in a crowded shopping mall anything different would happen?

In short, this underlying belief that humanity's "asshole" bit is set to off by default just doesn't sit well with me.