NYT Explores the World of Internet Trolls 423
prostoalex writes "New York Times magazine explores the history and status quo of Internet trolling. They look at the early days of Usenet trolling, current anonymous forums, and social networking pages as the latest venues for trolls: 'In the late 1980s, Internet users adopted the word troll to denote someone who intentionally disrupts online communities. Early trolling was relatively innocuous, taking place inside of small, single-topic Usenet groups. The trolls employed what the M.I.T. professor Judith Donath calls a pseudo-naïve tactic, asking stupid questions and seeing who would rise to the bait. The game was to find out who would see through this stereotypical newbie behavior, and who would fall for it. As one guide to trolldom puts it, If you don't fall for the joke, you get to be in on it.'"
Re:frosty piss (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, when a man and a woman (or any combination of the above) love each other very much...
Anonymity breeds contempt (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:i don't understand (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:PLEASE EXPLAIN! CAPSLOCK REPITITION FILTER FAIL (Score:3, Insightful)
You might want to check the post you replied to. It's 100% caps yet it passed the filter, giving even more weight to his "what is ingenious about it?" question.
Re:Anonymity breeds contempt (Score:3, Insightful)
My experience as a troll tells me it's because most of mankind frankly is -very- stupid, and easily strung along and made to believe incredibly stupid things, or gets angry about things that aren't worth sweating over.
Road rage is often done out of anger, anyway. Trolling is done for laughs. Trolling is more akin to pranking people than trying to get back at them.
Re:First troll (Score:2, Insightful)
You sound experienced, you must have bought Vista Ultimate then?
Re:trolled (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:First troll (Score:3, Insightful)
There's a big difference between successful trolling and just making yourself look like a complete idiot.
Whoosh. You just got meta-trolled.
Re:New York Times (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:First troll (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow. Wow.
clap-clap-clap-clap
Well Played you Magnificent Bastard.
Re:Troll Contest (Score:5, Insightful)
Case in point: Socrates. He went around asking people serious and uncomfortable questions. For moderation he was made to drink hemlock. In meta-moderation, pretty much everyone now agrees that moderation was unfair.
Re:You're a Troll If You Disagree With the Crowd (Score:5, Insightful)
In my experience being marked as troll in slashdot does not depend on _what_ you say, but on _how_ you say it.
The first times I came here and dared to speak I was modded down half of the time because I was too exited to write clearly and taking the time to justify my reasoning and not to offend the poster I was replying to (or at least to clearly justify why I was offending them).
I looked back at my "Troll" posts and I realized that I was assuming everyone did agree with me from the beginning.
Then I learned and built my karma up. Your post was, more or less, a good argumented post (except for the final provocation, of course), and it was not marked as Troll.
So, no, you are not a troll if you disagree with the crowd, you are a Troll if you treat people who disagree with you like dumb ignorant and insult them. Explain what you mean to them and they will mark you "Interesting" (or maybe just ignore you) most of the time.
Re:This was how it was done. (Score:5, Insightful)
Well from what I remember crossposting was usually used to create conflicts between opposite groups.
It usually started like "serbs will kick your arse next time" on soc.culture.croatia or "Europeons are sissies and we americans are tired to defend your pathetic... whatever" on soc.culture.europe
And of course croats, europeans would react. Those messages will appear on soc.culture.serbia or soc.culture.america.
And then a thread of pompeous messages will appear and soon or later the word "Nazi", "WW II" will appear en masse.
It was so predictable, boring, "common USENET trolling" was far from being an art to me. The only interesting I've learnt from this is how world war II is present in most people mind all over the world.
Most flamewars were utterly boring too, the ones I remember are FYROM and Macedonia (thx to Greek nationalists who managed to post their insults wherever they could) or Cyprus (between turks and greeks), tamil tigers, pfff and countless of topics. Most of the time their discussion were mostly copying & pasting articles (they usually kept posting the same for months) from the web and then signing them with "greeks are fags" and then somebody would reply "you turks are gay" with another copy/paste article...So interesting really
I was an active user of a group:
talk.politics.european-union or something and that's why I left USENET around 2002. I usually appreciated exchanging arguments with British eursceptics on that group (in a civil manner) but those trolls and nationalists were really an infection.
Re:New York Times (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Troll Contest (Score:4, Insightful)
Only an idiot would compare the "art" of trolling to Socrates. Asking serious and uncomfortable questions is not the same as trolling. Socrates intended to provoke discussion to learn and educate. Trolls intend to simply get a reaction, attention, not to educate -- or if they do, they're doing it in a way that is unconstructive.
Re:Troll Contest (Score:1, Insightful)
His gadfly metaphor in the Apology is further proof. Yes, he did want to help people be less stupid, but he didn't question the method of doing it by pissing people off. Isn't purposefully pissing people of the definition of trolling?
Also, in what fashion were any of Socrates victims^H^H^H^H^H^H^H interlocutors "enlightened?" All of Plato I've read (and yes I Am A Classics Student) has him at best getting them to agree to talk about it further, and generally has him pissing off his interlocutor into quitting.
So Galileo was right but unkind... (Score:2, Insightful)
While ridiculing a powerful person is naive, socially inept and/or courageous, it's also mean.
For me, trolling is defined by unkindness, not by truth. It's the intention to disrupt and hurt that makes it trolling. Even if done by speaking truth, it's still trolling.
I find that if I want to speak truth, it's straightforward to do it kindly. But not easy, if I'm triggered in some way. In that case, I need to first get over myself.
Re:Anonymity breeds contempt (Score:3, Insightful)
Who they really are or who they wish they could be?
I look at the rest of your statement and I wonder if the trolls are using the lame "it's funny to me and my cool friends" idea to mask their own feelings of inadequacy at being unable to contribute meaningfully. Trolling makes them feel special as being "one of the chosen few" that is in on the joke, and it relieves them from introspection required to critically examine their ideas as Ibn al-Haytham suggests. They wish that they were bold and witty and special, but they aren't, so they troll.