Trolling

Trolling mememath via Penny Arcade^[1]

About

Trolling refers to any behavior that is meant to intentionally anger or frustrate someone else. It is often associated with online discussions where users are subjected to offensive or superfluous posts and messages in order to provoke a response.

Origin

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary^[8], the noun “troll” originated from an Old Norse word for a type of monstrous creature. The verb comes from the Old French hunting term “troller.” According to Merriam-Webster^[9], the English verb to troll refers to the act of slowly dragging a lure while fishing as bait. According to a New York Times^[10] article from August 3rd, 2008, the word was first used on the Internet in the 1980s.

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.”

According to the troll Wikipedia page^[2], OED had cited the earliest recorded example of the word “troll” being used in an alt.folklore.urban Usenet group on December 14th, 1992. The cited link^[11] redirects to a welcome page as of September 15th, 2011.

Usage

Numerous forums and Usenet boards are dedicated to the fine art of what the New York Times^[10] called “manipulating other people’s emotional equilibrium.” Trolling can be considered a form of cyberbullying and in in the contest of online gaming, this practice is also known as griefing. Wikipedia has an overview of research^[5] behind the human motivation to troll.

Shock Value Trolling

Similar to Shock Sites, Shock Value Trolling (or just shock trolling) is trolling by means of disturbing and hurtful words or imagery. Shock trolls will often present pornographic images, goatse, or other disturbing images/ words to invoke a response out of the target. Shock trollers often will often gang up on a victim to flood them with such images.

Posthumous Trolling

This is a form of shock trolling, but the intended targets are often relatives and friends of loved ones. These trolls often are seen in Facebook memorial pages. The trolls will often come in waves, posting either porn images or bashing the person that has passed away. They then will intentionally argue with those that remain defending the person who has passed away.

The Theory of the Green Hair: Understanding Trolls

The following is another excerpt from “The Trolls Among Us” which was an article in the New York Times about trolling.^[14] In this portion, James Fortuny, a central figure behind the Megan Meier posthumous trolling, explains the concept of trolling and how it stops.

Fortuny: “You have green hair. Did you know that?”
Mattathias: “No,”
Fortuny: “Why not?”
Mattathias: “I look in the mirror. I see my hair is black.”
Fortuny: “That’s uh, interesting. I guess you understand that you have green hair about as well as you understand that you’re a terrible reporter.”
Mattathias: “What do you mean? What did I do?”
Fortuny: “That’s a very interesting reaction. why didn’t you get so defensive when I said you had green hair?” If I were certain that I wasn’t a terrible reporter, he explained, I would have laughed the suggestion off just as easily. The willingness of trolling “victims” to be hurt by words, he argued, makes them complicit, and trolling will end as soon as we all get over it.

(names added for clarity, bold text added for emphasis)

In Other Languages

In Japanese, tsuri (つり) means “fishing” and refers to intentionally misleading posts created with the purpose of eliciting negative response from other users. Arashi (あらし) means “laying waste” and can also be used to refer to simple spamming.

In Korean, nak-si (낚시) means “fishing”, and is used to refer to Internet trolling attempts, as well as purposefully misleading post titles. A person who recognizes the troll after having responded (or, in case of a post title nak-si, having read the actual post) would often refer to himself as a caught fish.

Notable Examples

On the Web

• Anonymous’ Tom Green’s Call-in Talk Show can be seen as an example of online-coordinated efforts at trolling.

• The Gold Membership Requirement myth has been notoriously used on 4chan to mislead newcomers into thinking that there is a premium account membership on the site.

• Trollface/Coolface is a rage comic image used in online discussions to indicate that the poster is trolling.

• I’m 12 years old and what is this??? is a comment that emerged from an Anonymous raid in May 2009 that resulted in a mass flood of pornographic videos on YouTube.

• Obviously incendiary subjects like 9/11 attacks, Hitler or Religion can be used by trolls to force start debates.

Jessie Slaughter

Jessie Slaughter, real name Jessica Leonhardt and formerly known as KerliGirl13^[1] on YouTube, is a Florida teenager whose attention-seeking behaviors in her YouTube videos caused her to become the target of a 4chan raid, resulting in a rage-fueled and ill-advised retort from her father that became the subject of image macros and remix videos. As a result, a police investigation was initiated by the local sheriff’s department to supposedly track down the pranksters.

Facebook Troll Arrest in the UK

On September 14th, 2011, Sean Duffy, a 25 year old British man from Reading, Berkshire was sentenced to eighteen weeks in jail after pleading guilty to “two counts of sending a communication of an indecent or offensive nature.” Months earlier, Duffy had left inappropriate videos and messages on the Facebook memorial page for Natasha MacBryde, a 15 year old girl who committed suicide after receiving anonymous messages on her Formspring page and having an argument with a friend via Facebook^[7], similar to the plot of the ABC Family movie Cyberbully.

On September 15th, the British news agencies Telegraph^[12] and BBC^[13] reported that Duffy was accused of posting similar videos and messages on another Facebook memorial tributes page for Sophie Taylor, a 16 year old girl who was accidentally shot dead by her boyfriend.

The Rules of the Internet: On Trolls

The Rules of the Internet are a popular piece of copypasta that can’t be attributed to any single author.
By looking at “The Rules of the Internet” one can see some pointers that basically describe how trolls work.

3.We are Anonymous.
4.Anonymous is legion.
5.Anonymous never forgives.
6.Anonymous can be a horrible, senseless, uncaring monster.

Rules 3-6 are a brief summary of the character of Anonymous.

8.There are no real rules about posting.
9.There are no real rules about moderation either – enjoy your ban.

Because everyone is Anonymous, there is no real central figure. Anonymous tries to be self-governing, but as we’ve learned from Boxxy, Anonymous is easily divided. Pretty much anything that can be posted, will get posted even if the results wind up banning the poster. Unfortunately most of the time bans are evaded.

11.All your carefully picked arguments can easily be ignored.
12.Anything you say can and will be used against you.
13.Anything you say can be turned into something else – fixed.
14.Do not argue with trolls – it means that they win.
15.The harder you try the harder you will fail.

Rules 11-15 describe exactly what one can expect when confronting a troll.

18.Everything that can be labeled can be hated.
19.The more you hate it the stronger it gets.

Rules 18 and 19 reinforce the presence of trolls and the nihilism behind the trolling behavior.

Rule 20. Nothing is to be taken seriously!

Rule 20 is perhaps the most important rule of all and best defense against trolls.

39. CAPSLOCK IS CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL

Rule 39 is an example of some good-natured trolling. The annoyance caused by CAPSLOCK is widely recognized, so to say that it is “cruise control for cool” is one of the few instances that sarcasm is able to carry over to text without much effort.

42.Nothing is Sacred
43.The more beautiful and pure a thing is – the more satisfying it is to corrupt it.

Rule 42 and 43 are statements that apply not only to the motivation behind trolls, but also to a warped sense of catharsis that some have experienced through observing trolls.

External Links