Does anyone have an experience to relate with respect to "trolling"?

[Leftist Agitator]

Either as a victim, bystander, or otherwise?

See this thread for reference:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=4322260&mesg_id=4322260

Now I absolutely do not condone trolling a dead kid's friends and family, that is pretty fucking terrible and WAY over the line, as far as I'm concerned, but the general impetus for trolling seems to be one that is common to a lot of interactions on the internet.

I'm fairly certain that everyone here would agree that saying hateful things about a young girl who committed suicide is abhorrent, but trolling seemingly encompasses far more than that.

Does anyone have any experience with this kind of thing? What are your opinions of the phenomenon?

Please, tell me what you think. This is a wonderfully diverse community, and I'd love to get a sampling of opinions from across the DU spectrum.

[Roland99]

1. Trolling is nothing new. It's been around before the internet became popular in the mid-90s

back in the days of community BBS and CompuServe and such.

[Leftist Agitator]

2. Back in the day, trolling was unsophisticated.

Usenet? Shit, that was "post a deliberately naive question and watch the idiots get all bent out of shape over the noob".

These days? The internet is a hateful fucking bitch. Now, trolling has taken on a personal dimension that the old school shit just didn't have.

I'll admit, I'm fascinated by the phenomenon, hence the OP. Just the same, I fervently believe that modern trolling has gone way too far. I just want to learn what kinds of interactions people on DU have had with trolls.

And for the record, trolls occasionally band together to accomplish laudable goals. Like saving Dusty the Cat, or getting pedophiles locked up. Oh, and Scientology. They do troll Scientology, which is pretty awesome.

[d_r]

3. trolling

used to be like the metaphor was like fishing. Like in usenet days somebody would post on rec.sports.college.football "Florida state is going to get beat by Notre Dame this weekend, but they'll still win the SEC." And then a dozen people would say "FSU isn't in the SEC@!!!" The trick was not getting caught by that stupid stuff, and it was sometimes almost funny seeing the stuff people would come up with. But as the internet got bigger it got uglier, I guess.

[Leftist Agitator]

8. "But as the internet got bigger it got uglier, I guess. "

That is true. But I think that another component of the hatred that has suffused the modern trolling scene is the demographic shift from highly intelligent yet somewhat alienated young men to less intelligent ignorami who are no less alienated and infinitely more hateful than their predecessors.

My $0.02, I suppose.

[TreasonousBastard]

4. I don't know if it's gotten worse, or just more of it...

now that every dickhead with a grudge against life is online.

Back in the "glory" days of usenet I knew a guy who lost his job because a stalker got to his employer, and at least one divorce. Stalking without major consequences seemed to be a regular thing.

Oh, and there were a couple af alt.suicide froups that may be still around where some assholes seemed to get their jollies egging 'em on.

[Leftist Agitator]

6. "Oh, and there were a couple af alt.suicide froups..."

Oh, they're still there. That is some seriously sick fucking shit right there. There was just recently, as in within the past month where a UK male nurse was encouraging people to commit suicide on webcam so he could watch. He played a role in nearly a dozen deaths that the police have been able to connect him to thus far.

I've honestly seen worse though, hard as it may be to believe. That asshole and Lori Drew are just the tip of the iceberg...

[KittyWampus]

5. Is defending Chinese torture of tigers for using their bones in snakeoil trolling behavior?

[Leftist Agitator]

7. Is disrespecting the medical traditions of a 6000 year old culture trolling?

Because I kind of think that it is. Where's your sympathy for the animals that we use for our Western medical purposes?

[lbrtbell]

10. The animals we use aren't endangered species

The very existence of tigers is threatened by what these people are doing.

That's the difference. If my next-door neighbor did something to threaten the existence of a species, I'd vehemently object to that, too.

[lbrtbell]

9. Sometimes trolling is a good thing

I remember a Usenet newsgroup called alt.flame.n*ggers, which was trolled heavily by people of the normal, sane, NON-racist variety. Once in a while, when I had time to spare, I'd join in the trolling against those vulgar, racist, troglodytes. There was something satisfying in letting them know that, even on the internet, there was no safe place for their brand of hatred to be expressed without consequences.

Of course, now these people have Fox News to call home. :puke:

[marshall]

11. My experience on alt.grief back in the late 90s

The routine on the group was for a newbie to introduce themselves, tell about their recently deceased loved one and what that person meant to them, and then receive messages of support from the others in the group. One day a woman related a story about losing her "beloved" ovary. She flew into a rage when group members directed her to the depression group. She stalked each person who dared to respond to her insane posts with very personal attacks drawn from the details of their previous posts. She posted things like "you son is lucky he is dead with a mother like you" or "the happiest day of a woman's life is the day she can dance on her father's grave". She also insisted on having a photo the doctor had taken of her ovary posted on a related page with all of the "loved ones". She said her grief was worse than ours, because we had the comfort of believing we would be reunited with our loved ones, but "there is no heaven for lost ovaries." When everyone started just ignoring this person somebody calling themselves her mother started posting, saying she was in the hospital after trying to commit suicide, all because of us and how cruel and uncaring we were.

In teaching I have often used that story to relate to students how unpredictable the intenret is, and how vulnerable one can be. Even if somebody doesn't know your name, they can take bits of personal information you've posted and torment you with it. And you never know what kind of mentally unstable folks you'll encounter.

[Brickbat]

14. I'm sorry, but that story is horrifyingly awesome.

I'm sure she brought a lot of grief and annoyance to a space many people thought was safe. I'm sorry you had to deal with her toxicity.

And about an ovary!

[Leftist Agitator]

15. Yep. That's some OK trolling.

A good counter-troll would have mocked the ostensible loss of her ovary.

There's no better trolling than trolling a troll.

[marshall]

18. In hindsight that would have been a good solution

But I think everyone on the group was so fragile themselves, they weren't up to confronting this person. It was the perfect place for a cyber-bully to inflict maximum damage on people who were the least prepared to defend themselves.

There was no "tomb-stoning" of people. The only option was to "hide" a person's posts. But with new people joining who were fresh in their grief and had no knowledge of the turmoil caused by this person, if we all hid the posts we would not be in a position to protect the new people.

[Leftist Agitator]

19. There is some trolling I can get behind, and some that I never would.

Trolling a self-important fuckwit? Awesome. Perhaps said fuckwit will eventually learn to get the fuck off of the internet once and for all, or failing that, learn to be less of a fucking retard whilst on the internet.

Then there are things that piss me off, glorious trollings though they be. Like mocking a teenage suicide victim. That's not OK as far as I'm concerned. I understand why someone would do something like that, but it doesn't make it acceptable by any means.

Then you have your grey areas, such as this guy: http://cogsdev.110mb.com/cwcki/index.php/Chris

On the surface, he's just some weird autistic guy who draws a shitty comic, who seemingly doesn't deserve the abuse that the internet heaps on him, but when you delve a little deeper, you learn that he's a racist, homophobic, sexist asshole who is absolutely unwilling to listen to the good advice that dozens of people, including yours truly, have tried to give him.

Is it right to troll someone like that? I would say no. But he is an utterly reprehensible fuckhead just the same, and I laugh at his antics just as I would any other fuck up on the series of tubes.

For fuck's sake, he has his own Wikipedia dedicated to his life!

Who among us can say that we inspire a similar level of devotion?

TL;DR
Trolling can be good sport, and often is, but it's not for the faint of heart. And oftentimes the hateful shitheads on the internet will take it way too fucking far.

[JVS]

17. "there is no heaven for lost ovaries."

:rofl:

[SolidGold]

12. It's a constant factor of the universe

It's like time and space.

[SidDithers]

13. Trolling is a art...nt

:evilgrin:

Sid

[LoZoccolo]

16. It is an approach to online interaction which takes advantage of the dynamics of online interaction.

I think it can be useful in today's politicial climate in this way: political rhetoric for many people has been reduced to what has been termed "talking points". There's no longer anny pretense that the purpose is necessarily to inform or to establish an opinion as compelling; it is simply "what you should go around saying". Often times these "talking points" simply serve to establish that further debate with the person using them is futile, or to flood the public discourse with so many things to debunk that it wastes the opponent's time and resources (similar to a denial-of-service attack, but with human rather than electronic communication). Trolling can be a way of getting someone to admit somethng about their position, possibly inconsistencies or absurdities in that position, while slipping past those talking points and getting them off of the script.