Internet troll study: Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, sadism
slate.com
slate.com
True trolling is about, among other things, plausible deniability. The troll identifies a pressure point in the collective unconscious of an online community, and then subtly attacks it. Depending on how skilled the troll is, what follows is a lot of attention and a large degree of over-reaction. The troll can then take the moral highground and pretend to be perplexed at these harsh responses, which of courses only provokes even more enraged responses. The cycle can be quite amusing. It can also generate/provoke lots of debate that a community would otherwise not be inclined to start.
It's not about personal attacks.
I've held the door to a female coworker and being told off by management for potential _sexual harassment_ ..... I've asked my friend how her female flatmate is doing these days and I am being called a _stalker_ ....
This is going way too far. This Anglo-saxon view of what is correct and what is not, feels like a psychological defense mechanism for people that cannot or do not want to deal with those situation. Protection a less able person is something, but hiding behind such rules feels like plain cowardice.
Always summed it up perfectly for me when trying to describe it simply. It's a subtle sentence, it begs to be corrected, and it's sure to incite replies... once someone "takes the bait" it's just a matter of working whatever their weakest point is to incite maximum rage. It's basically a form of social engineering when you boil it down to the basics.
"trolling is AN art"
"yeah, that's what I just said stupid..."
"well I'm not the idiot making simple grammatical erors."
"erors... you sure about that? Listen I went to Harvard for English studies... I think I know when to use A vs AN, it's not like I don't have an degree or something..."
... and the cycle continues ...
p.s. I might enjoy trolling more than the average bear.
I think the latter group are the ones you speak of, and yes, they are often strikingly funny.
As for the traits the study focuses on, those are what I myself often indulge in, yet I haven't trolled anywhere, ever, except maybe 4chan in my younger days, and despite having been an internet dweller for the last ten years at least.
They literally ask people to self-identify as trolling. And their items sound darn like trolling to me:
> We also included four items relevant to trolling that were interspersed in the other measures: ‘‘I have sent people to shock websites for the lulz’’, ‘‘I like to troll people in forums or the comments section of websites’’, ‘‘I enjoy griefing other players in multiplayer games’’, and ‘‘The more beautiful and pure a thing is, the more satisfying it is to corrupt’’
I mean, come on. There might be things to criticize about this study, but the measure of trolling definitely has 'face validity', as the psych types say.
[...]
> And their items sound darn like trolling to me:
at first I lol'ed... but then i serious'ed.
A good troll often expresses no view, and simply asks questions for which no good answer is provided. This is my favorite trolling question: "what evidence, if any, would convince you your theory is wrong?"
This reminded me of a great article[1] that I read recently. It's not related to trolling, but trolls often engage in the type of discussion mentioned in this article. One of the parents gave an excellent example (the one with the "an degree" joke).
[1]: http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/17/the-death-of-expertise/
....but around the 13th of round of questions like "How many PCP-laced cigarettes do you smoke per week? A. One, B. Two, C. Three., D. Four, E. Five, F. Six to Ten G. Eleven to Twenty, H. Twenty-one or more," something switched inside of me and I started filling in the questions as if I were the most depraved abuser of every substance from the kitchen sink to highway overpass.
Google search for the title along with with 'filetype:pdf' is what is needed here...
http://scottbarrykaufman.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/trol...
Enjoy!
Well. That's not good news for ol' sliverstorm.
Chatting to people online is like having all your conversations through a crack in the wall. Except that even the tone of voice is filtered out.
More to the topic (online time vs personality traits), maybe it's why IRC feels like it's a haven for cynics?
Knocking down the paywall would help, but most pop-study coverage usually is great for research funding, but not often an indicator of great research. I did a case-control study showing this at some point and it got published to an open journal somewhere.
If they're narcissists, then yes, because a narcissist is perfect, and each of his traits is a gift to humanity, so he wouldn't hesitate to describe how he sees himself, in gory detail. This obviously argues with the meaning of "honest answer", unless we accept that an honest answer is anything a person believes to be true.
More depth on this topic: http://arachnoid.com/ChildrenOfNarcissus
Yes, but some trolling is a genuine gift to humanity. I've seen (and executed) some truly celestial-- even operatic-- trolls.
By the way, I can't stand online bullies. Those assholes ruined trolling IMO. Trolling was awesome when what happened online, stayed online and no one ever tried to fuck with another's "IRL" existence. The problem is that, while the skilled trolls tended to stay white/gray hat-- shit, some have said that I'm an extremely-white-hat troll-- the unskilled trolls had nothing other than evil to distinguish themselves. Eventually it became repulsive.
I don't really find it that interesting when people just try to troll and cause havoc for absolutely no reason at all other than their own amusement. There should be an appropriate target who has been flapping their gums and needs to be brought down a peg.
Pretty sure I managed to do the whole thing without explicitly lying, either.
Actually using the word "killfile" probably puts you on a terrorist watchlist.
Slate's summary is woefully unconvincing, however.
In fact, some of the described methods they used to identify trolls seemed very inadequate. Something a jolly prankster would latch onto for the sake of humor.
http://web.archive.org/web/20070609085706/http://www.sm.luth...
It doesn't excuse it, but it's the default response.
The real question is, are you generally trolling cause it's hilarious, or are you trying to bully individual people? It's tough to tell.
I think that a large portion of the people who troll online are actually just people with different senses of humor or different priorities. In 'meatspace' the differences are noticed for what they are as you get to know and appreciate the other person, but online the differences are assumed to be the result of malicious intent.
In my experience there's a good chance that the person who is griefing you in CS:S is the same sort of person who brings a squirt gun to the family gathering or makes a snow-man^Wpenis on his grandmothers lawn. Not sadists, just goofs.
Real question is: does trolling on the internet help mitigate real life tendencies?
Are the effects of Internet trolling better than the effects of real life behavior?
Life has been changed.
I should probably disbelieve every story I've ever heard about people committing suicide due to online bullying, too.
We should tolerate trolls and love them because in the minority of this population maybe master troll bringing up new ideas.
The fact I am a troll does not mean I am a genius, nor that I have any interest lobbying for the usefullness of trolls :) But I think the non troll way of discussing is creating trolls: using fallacies, not accepting strong logical criticizes that can enforce an idea, the ad hominem based on authority rather than the construction of arguments, the lack of passion and sometimes humor that comes with.
So my point is trolling is beneficial to every communities, and it should stay fun.
It's the result of being too mentally lazy to take the time to see another sides point of view but smart enough to justify their point in a way that's hard to argue against.
It's a very republican mindset.
I started out as a gray hat troll and became more white-hat over time. We have nothing in common with the black hat trolls and the bullies. Online bullies are (like all bullies) horrible people, but trolling is a different thing entirely. It can be done in a way that doesn't hurt people. The first rule of a decent troll: don't fuck with peoples' IRL.
The obvious parallel with security hacking doesn't seem to quite work for me if I think of "white-hat trolling" as a kind of human pentesting because humans who know they are being trolled are unlikely to get trolled by definition.
It's a vigilante kind of outlaw justice, and is especially useful when the mods are stuck in a gray area and can't act authoritatively. (Accusations of censorship or favoritism, for instance.) Done well, it helps prune back the negative elements of a community. It's insanely easy for such a thing to get out of control, though, which makes the "vigilante" analogy apt: same community, I was both thanked by the mods for steerage and given warnings for lashing out too much. (I was also offered a mod position, but turned it down.)
It's like any other kind of trolling; the difference is wholly in your target choice. It is not the mark of a good person.
"Trolls" (I use troll as a synonym for bully) are different in that aspect. They employ anonymity to attack someone. They chose their role as someone's tormentor, which is very real as opposed to two actors on set, who each know what their roles are.
Actors play roles in (fictional and/or other) universes; trolls play roles in ours, which renders all their actions real, and they are aware of it.
P.S: not sure if you were being funny by posting a controversial comment :P
You shouldn't.
"In Internet slang, a troll (/ˈtroʊl/, /ˈtrɒl/) is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a forum, chat room, or blog), either accidentally or with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_%28Internet%29
"Bullying is the use of force, threat, or coercion to abuse, intimidate, or aggressively impose domination over others. The behavior is often repeated and habitual. One essential prerequisite is the perception, by the bully or by others, of an imbalance of social or physical power." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullying
Further, as Tycho points out:
> What this article describes I would simply call 'bullying' or anonymous bullying or in extreme cases harassment.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7242130
Trolling is about provoking your enemy into revealing himself. It's not just walking up to someone and saying something rude or stupid. But that's about the most the majority of people can handle.