Forums / Discussion / Serious Debate

I noticed people will respond to even the most obvious of trolls. I have seen people on imgur respond to advice animal posts all the time and I think why do they do it? Do they not realize it's obvious bait? Do they know it's bait and just feel the need to make a comment anyways? Do they themselves think they are master trole hurr durr?
well, whatever the reason I decided to test it out in this thread here
The image I posted is about tipping strippers. I never say anything about the food service industry and yet people responded. In reality I am a very generous tipper.
ITT: A serious discussion about why people feed the trolls
Have you ever responded to an obvious troll? If so why?

Because people love making discussions out of absolutely nothing.
Just take a look at this.

yeah so it's a white and gold dress, so what? I wanna hear about your experience with obvious trolls and troll threads. How do you react? And what is your take on people who respond to trolls.

The forum has gotten to a point where all the jokes have been beaten into the dust to a point where they are nothing more than annoying, with only the newer members finding it entertaining anymore. The same old circlejerks, jokes, words, and ofcourse, memes everyday…

The older members who have seen the same trolling shit over and over again just devolve into being passive-aggressive.

Wish this was riff raff, buts its not, so I'll say this. People get into different mindsets depending on situations, and in an actual discussion mindset jokes, bait, and trolling just stop being registered as anything but genuine opinion of the other person. If you're in the mood for fun then anything can be funny. If your in the mood to argue or discuss everything is serious.

That's not really on topic but I'll respond.
I am one of the oldfags here and yes KYM loves to beat a dead horse. I personally have always tried to follow the rules of the internet Rule20. Nothing is to be taken seriously. I also spend a lot of time on /b/ where "The stories and information posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact". So I kinda feel like everything is false unless proved otherwise. I came to this site and liked this site because it made me laugh. It still does. I just take a break from time to time because of it's dumb rules, mods that make up their own conclusions to the rules and people who complained about what I posted and they would or have posted similar. A good example is that you can be "scolded" by a mod or even other users for being off topic if you post something funny in a serious thread. like you can't post anything funny in serious threads anymore. I always felt most memes came from people being funny in serious threads. But all in all though this site is still is fun for me.

To be honest there aren't many real trolls here on KYM and the ones that do pop up end up getting banned I wouldn't even call any of the Riff Raff threads troll threads they are just fun threads. The only real troll threads are from serious debate threads. The easiest and most used trolls are religion, politics, sexism and racism. And those are the type of trolls I'm talking about in this thread.

Well, couple things Vaz…

1. You posted a thread in Serious Debate. Where we have a growing expectation that every thread there is serious and is taken seriously. That's why the board exists. Of course what you post there gets debated. There's not much else to do in a board the enforces debate

2. People talked about tipping in general because you provided no context. You said nothing about strippers .You effectively said: "Tipping. Discuss". So we did. Again, I don't see how this comes as surprise

3. The subject of tipping actually is kind of a deal. If you thought you were posting about a silly topic with a silly nonsense debate, then you'd be mistaken. You managed to stumble upon a growing hot debate topic that's garnering more and more attention nationwide

4. You didn't troll anybody. You didn't make anyone buttmad. You didn't waste our time. You didn't make us feel stupid. You just started a very reasonable debate topic which we were all happy to debate. I have to say I certainly didn't realize I was falling for a troll topic since it was devoid of any real humor or sarcasm and came off as a legitimate question…in fact it was. If that's trolling then what exactly have you learned from 4chan?

Anyway moving back on topic

Have you ever responded to an obvious troll? If so why?

Yes I have. Plenty of times. Like a part of the natural internet rage cycle, there are some people that like starting fires and some people that like burning.

I've had times where I knew someone was trying to troll. But I wanted to argue and rant. Because I felt like ranting, and using the troll as an excuse just to soapbox. I didn't care if the troll got a giggle. I just wanted to make a point.

And it's fun making angry upset rants some times. It's almost feels good to get MAD once in a while and shit it all out. You may have even seen me make some posts where I admit that the OP is a troll but I make an angry raging frothy rant on the subject anyway, knowing full well that it's a joke, for fun. Last time I did that was on the thread about the latest Jurassic Park movie being called sexist

When you realize how some people like acting as total authority on even joke subjects just to get their kicks, some parts of tumblr and 4chan make a lot more sense. And it also makes the cycle of internet hate look like some kind of mutual ecosystem

1. yes I did post in serious debate so I'll give you that. but really it would not be a troll in Riff Raff would it?
2. This started in IRC between me and RandomMan talking about people responding to (what seemed to me at the time) a serious debate troll bait. I said to him I bet people would respond to an advice animal and you did.
3. I picked that topic carefully because if I chose religion, abortion, politics, etc. most people would know I'm trolling and it seemed light enough to not start a shitstorm.
4. I wasn't trying to get people buttmad I would have used other tactics to do that. My point was to simply see if people would respond and talk about why people would respond to something as stupid as advice puffin meme. Also I am just being hur durr I trole you. I'm not being serious at all about this so called troll

I do understand releasing some steam once and a while and fighting just for the sake of fighting but it seems (especially here on KYM) that people like to debate no matter what the subject and some subjects I see and have to say to myself "SRSLY? This subject again? You guys are really going to discuss this?". Where if this was 4chan you would just see Gr8 B8 R8 8/8.jpg

The new way some people are trolling on 4chan is by being friendly and being askholles it frustrates the shit out of me. "can I get sauce?" google! "requesting shota." Start your own thread! after image cap " post more of this >>" GTFO! but I do my best to just ignore them and keep posting.

{ The only real troll threads are from serious debate threads. The easiest and most used trolls are religion, politics, sexism and racism. And those are the type of trolls I’m talking about in this thread. }

Why do you feel that those topics are trolls instead of people who actually want to talk about those issues? It seems like any topic around here that isn't video games or the next big meme is a "troll" thread. What does that even mean? It's thrown around like it means "I don't want to actually discuss this topic and your opinion is not the majority opinion so I'm just gonna say you're trolling and call it a day".

Like your thread, you brought up a legitimate topic of discussion that people obviously have different opinions towards and then they voiced those opinions, so how were you "trolling" anyone? Does trolling mean "make people genuinely discuss an issue"?

Trolling How To

Why do you feel that those topics are trolls instead of people who actually want to talk about those issues?

You can usually tell the difference between trolling and people wanting to know things

this is a real thread people are responding to

what do you think? troll or no? is OP even a woman?

People respond to trolls because they think they're accomplishing something by doing so.
By not responding to a troll, people feel they are succumbing to what the troll is saying, leaving them in the wrong. In many cases, responding to a troll can be much more satisfying than ignoring them, even though the latter is a better strategy.

Are people responding to an image macro or a thread that has a written OP? I don't think anyone who seriously wanted to discuss a topic would open with a picture.

& I have heard multiple friends say pretty much that exact same thing, especially when we go out, so… idk if that's the best example of an opinion that is "obviously a troll". xD;;;

yes Imgur Reddit's image hosting site

>post a topic in Serious Debate
>people respond by debating the topic
And you're surprised because?

I completely ignored the image macro because it's an image macro and went off of the title and your written response. Also, the subject of tipping is actually one that's debated quite a bit, so there was added validity to the thread.

When was I surprised? I never said I was. Dumbfounded maybe? but yeah keep on track this isn't about me, I wanted a serious discussion about troll threads, trolling and trolls and I already answered about the topic of that thread. you got anything to add to this thread?

Hey, you just admitted to making a troll thread in serious debate. I'm going to have to suspend you for that. Huehuehue

Alright, but being serious. I'm not sure anyone there really realized it was supposed to be a troll thread. It seems more like they saw a thread with an OP that provided a bare-bones discussion and they just morphed it into something they wanted to talk about.

I know that's not exactly the topic of the thread, but I'm getting to that.

Maybe some people respond because they don't realize they're just being baited. That doesn't really describe why people feel the need to reply to obvious trolls though.

Maybe it has something to do with wanting to look smart. I mean, most replies to obvious trolls are people announcing that they've seen through the troll (with bait and troll images). And whenever someone finds themselves caught by a well-hidden troll, they resort to saving face.

In both instances they're trying to avoid looking dumb. Either by saying "look guys, I found the troll", or by saying "I was never really rused at all lol."

At least, that's what I've noticed.

Edit: Fixed something. Haha

The fact that your post was trolling was irrelevant you posted in a serious board about a serious topic so the topic got some good discussion with opposing sides excluding you. In the end that's all that matters if you were just trying to be a dick that doesn't matter. Like I wasn't even really replying to you mainly just the topic itself and other people in the thread. You posted a dumb advice animal with no context and a good topic… So? I don't even understand this thread or why you're so interested in this.