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The Psychology Of Trolling

  
  

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Cat Chant
14:15 / 09.11.05
I think this point, by OJ back on page 2, is key:

is there a tension between the assumption that seems to be made about trolls as outsiders, disrupting a community/society and this modus operandum of picking off individuals, which to me seems to be pretty much akin to bullying?

It relates to some of the questions we've discussed before about the relation of individuals and community - whether a troll can attack a community through individuals...
 
 
---
16:06 / 09.11.05
I don't believe in spamming people's message boxes with trivial matters such as this. If the person who started the thread finds my deviations to be an abstraction, they can just ask a moderator to remove them (wouldn't be the first time). I don't really give a flying fuck, to be honest. Some people take the internet way too seriously.

Yeah, it's really serious biznass man. I've PM'd you anyway.
 
 
Shrug
16:55 / 09.11.05
Nadon's right in that aspect though, far better to say something like that in a public forum rather than a supercilious pm (that's if you feel the need to say anything like it at all).
I'm not sure which behaviour would be considered more trollish though.
 
 
electric monk
17:19 / 09.11.05
No.

In fact, if one has a problem with another poster, I'm of the opinion that it's highly advisable to hash it out via PM. No interruptions/egging on from other posters. No possibility of posturing for the rest of the board. No fucking threadrot. And suchlike.

Or better still, put 'im on Ignore and leave it. Infinitely better than "I hate you and your lying, you lying liar."
 
 
Ganesh
17:23 / 09.11.05
Indeed. Now, on with the topic. BoingBoing is watching.
 
 
Ganesh
17:29 / 09.11.05
Could people be single issue trolls? Amenable to persuasion, even pleasant to talk to on most subjects, but get them on the topic of the state of Israel/materialism in hip-hop/whether abbreviations count in scrabble or whatever and they become impossible to reason with to the point of trollism?

Oh, absolutely. I'm sure that, to dear ol' Fritz on CBBS, I was a single-issue troll on the subject of sex - to the extent that, eventually, I was warned that if I contributed to threads on homosexuality, I'd be banned outright (which I eventually was).
 
 
grant
20:09 / 10.11.05
I was thinking there might also be a line drawn somewhere between trolling-as-art and trolling-as-ideological/activist-weapon.

Some people like to get the rise just to get the rise, while others like to get the rise to *make change* or at least to dismay "the enemy" (whoever that is).

I mean, if you want to extend the fishing analogy, some people fish for the joy of fishing, while others fish to get something tasty to eat.

This might be a rationale, though. I like to think my own experiences on other boards have been pranking along the ideological "wake UP, man!" lines, but it's also a hell of a lot of fun.
 
 
Evil Scientist
10:42 / 13.01.06
I realise this thread is a bit rotty. But I didn't want to start another one considering that trolls and trolling is what I wanted to write about.

During the current situation with Hawksmoor over in Creation I have, for the most part, simply lurked on the threads ve's been involved in. I contributed once towards the arse-end of the second of his short story threads with what, on the top of things, seemed to me to be a rational and non-aggressive post.

However, thinking back on it, why did I feel the need to get involved at all? I've been here long enough to recognise a trolling-in-progress. The rational path to dealing with trolls has never been one filled with success. Trolls seem to thrive on conflict. At best they'll ignore a non-aggressive post, at worst they'll PM vast amounts of abuse.

Luckily Hawksmoor's got more than enough people to shout at and didn't seem to notice my post. But at the gym later that day I found myself questioning my motivations for posting. Did I do it because I thought my post might have an effect on him, or simply because I wanted a response so I could join in with the general Barbelith immune-response?

It was the latter wasn't it? I'm pretty annoyed with myself about it too. At the time of posting I genuinely thought I might help, at least a little, by drawing Hawksmoor onto conversation about how writers percieve their work. But there was part of me that wanted him to fling some shit my way so I could start being pithy at him.

So, in a sense, I was enabling the trolling to continue by the very action of wanting to get into an argument with Hawksmoor.

On the first page of this thread The Healing Image says:

The trolls in barbelith bring together the board members providing a more cohesive sense of board identity, in that sense they help barbelith to define itself as a community, what it deems tolerable and intolerable.

Which certainly seems true of this latest incident. The board as a whole has made it very clear to Hawksmoor that the community of Barbelith will not tolerate his behaviour as it currently stands. There is a sense of unity in the posts that call Hawksmoor on his racism and homophobia, and direct him to re-read the policies of Barbelith.

I freely admit to have been very entertained by the threads, and I don't think I'm the only person who's enjoyed watching the wordslingers on the board go to school on a troll. Provoking one into getting more and more offensive is, in theory, a good way to ensure they get banned. Give them enough rope and they will hang themselves, yes absolutely (and only metaphorically).

But if the troll is providing entertainment by being the bad guy in a thread, is their presence as unwanted as their counter-posters make out? If they're (as in Hawksmoor's case) contained in a small grouping of threads, most of which they themself started, is there even a need to confront them beyond an initial warning against their behaviour? Or does the attention provided for the troll in those threads actually serve to contain it from infecting other people's threads?

I'm rambling on a bit. So I'll hold it there for a sec. But I just want to say that I'm not pointing fingers or criticising anyone but myself. These are just a few thoughts I wanted to share.
 
 
Jack Fear
10:59 / 13.01.06
...there was part of me that wanted him to fling some shit my way so I could start being pithy at him.

That's a pretty astute and fearless self-analysis there, and the key, too, to why trollfighting always leaves me so weary and disgusted, and why the round of high-fives that almost always follows leaves such a bad taste in my mouth.

Because you know what? He got what he wanted. He wanted us to lose our shit. He wanted us to get angry. And he wanted to prove that we're a precious little clique, waiting to pounce on anybody who doesn't toe the line.

Was there good reason to ban Hawksmoor? God almighty, yes.n I'd fucking prosecute him, if I could. But it's the way it went down that bugs me. It was always going to be ugly, given the ugliness of his sentiments: but it seems to me that we—myself emphatically included—made it uglier than it needed to be.
 
 
Spaniel
11:02 / 13.01.06
An interesting and honest post. I really appreciate your willingness to talk about how your motivations in this instance weren't exactly pure. As for how we should engage with the trolls of this world, there is always a period when we, as a board, are unsure of exactly what we are dealing with - a troll, a harmless jokesuit, an idiot, a loon - this period is usually characterized by attempts to tease out the motivations and reasons behind the poster's antagonistic style. Cue teasing, probing questions, heated discussion. This is a necessary stage in the board's immune response.
 
 
Regrettable Juvenilia
11:02 / 13.01.06
I'm sure we all have plenty to be ashamed of, Jack. I'm not sure this needs to be added to the list.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
11:14 / 13.01.06
Because you know what? He got what he wanted. He wanted us to lose our shit. He wanted us to get angry.

But... did we? I mean, as a board, even as individuals. I saw some attempts to reason, some abuse and a lot of piss-taking, but nobody really lost their shit.

Realistically, Hawksmoor isn't literate enough, or stable enough, to understand what the motication, mood or even meaning of other people's contributions are. He may believe that he won a victory, but, realistically, so what? Any response would have been sent through the loon transformer and turned into a triumph.
 
 
Char Aina
11:20 / 13.01.06
i dunno.
antibodies have to break down, dont they?
once they've done their job, dont they get killed off as well?

i think the barbelith immune system is great, but i think the off-switch is as important as the on. i think that, as there are those who challenge that which is harmful, there are those who challenge that which harms the harmful. i dont think the roles are necessarily permanent, but they do always get played, dont they?

if it balances out we get a great, healthy board.
i for one think it does and we do.

i'm glad there are people there to stop me if i go too far, for whatever reason, for or against whatever cause. even with the worst fuck bastards there's a too far, wouldnt you say petey?
 
 
Spaniel
11:23 / 13.01.06
I don't agree, even loons have motivations, standards that denote victory, or degrees of victory. Whilst I think many of the responses to Hawksmoor were very funny - yours very much included, Haus - I also think it went on far too long, and as we all know trolls thrive on attention. The more you give them, the longer you engage with them, the better. If a troll thinks they're gonna cause a great big shitstorm, and frankly, that's exactly what I think Hawksmoor acheived (case in point: we're still talking about him now), every time they show up, then are are far more likely to want to show up again, and again, and again.
I know these things are difficult to judge, I know it takes time to establish what we're dealing with, I know people want to spell out just how offensive a given act of trolling is, I know people want to take the piss, and I know we as a board like to take stock of any significant situation and its consequences, I just think we should rein ourselves in a little.
 
 
STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK
12:02 / 13.01.06
(raises hand as one who also said more than was necessary)

It's a hard balance to keep, isn't it? At one extreme, there's letting stuff go unchallenged, which isn't what happened here. Then there's more people registering disapproval and laying the smackdown, and I remember occasions in the past (a couple in Comics, I think) when we've upbraided each other for NOT enough people registering disapproval, and taken this for tacit consent. Then there's everyone piling in and joining in the fun (as was the case here) which may or may not be too far.

Then there's just hounding across the board, which didn't happen here- largely that's because there WERE no sensible posts elsewhere for people to take "the wrong way", so it's hard to tell whether that WOULD have happened.

Personally, I was really trying not to keep adding stuff... but it's hard, you know?

I think there's also a case to be made in this instance that it was very clear that this was a general consensus on behalf of a lot of posters- there can be no accusations this time that it was just, say, Haus being mean.

However... the "angry mob" thing is a VERY easy mode to slip into.
 
 
Char Aina
12:22 / 13.01.06
i think an important factor is whether or not the attacks on the poster in question are solicited. if i send a PM to someone calling them names i can reasonably expect a response in kind or close. in this case we had a poster who was not only repeating his abuse, but sending it to new people every day.

i for one did not send him a single private message that was not preceded by one from him, and i can almost say the same about my on-board posts. i also recieved WAY more abuse than i gave, off thread and on.
 
 
Axolotl
12:25 / 13.01.06
I'm aware that I should have stayed out of it, as my comments were uneccesary at the time as Hawksmoor was already being challenged for his behaviour, but that type of behaviour pisses me off and I find it hard to bite my tongue. I think the balance has to be struck between the everyone piling on that may cause more problems than it solves, and making it clear just how the community will not stand for that kind of behaviour.
Still I think (hope?) I've learnt a lesson about the perils of feeding the troll, and I'd like to applaud ES for bringing this up with his honesty in examining his motives.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
12:34 / 13.01.06
Well, the other thing to remember is that actually nobody has, to my knowledge, been banned for the board for homophobic hate speech alone before... which I think is an important factor. We can now in a similar situation say with confidence that such behaviour will lead to banning. Hopefully. As such, a sensible reaction next time migh be for a mod to say that this suit will be banned and this thread locked in the nearish future, and ask people to limit comments to approval or disapproval of this. It would be a lot less funny, but we don't have to follow the contingency path of trying to communicate to somebdoy that, although they may not be banned, they will be treated with contempt and hostility in the hope that they will leave, expressed through ignoring them or mocking them or insulting them.
 
 
Spaniel
12:36 / 13.01.06
i think an important factor is whether or not the attacks on the poster in question are solicited.

Why is this an important factor? Why is a response necessary or justifiable in this context? Sure, responding is more than understandable, but I don't see that it will actually achieve anything other than giving the troll a reason to continue trolling.
 
 
Spaniel
12:38 / 13.01.06
It would be a lot less funny

Oh, I think there's still room for humour, especially in the aforementioned sussing out stage.
 
 
Char Aina
13:34 / 13.01.06
Why is this an important factor?

if he had left me alone and i had gone after him, then i would have been harrasing him. if he sends me a message then i am entitled and in some ways obliged to respond, especially if that message asks questions.

i wont deny it is also pretty funny to watch someone start a fight they cant finish, but mostly i answer because i feel that i have the right to reply.

what does it achieve, you ask?
well, it makes me feel better for one.
i was also trying to educate the dude, to give him the informtion so that if and when he did take a tumble to his bad self he had something to think about.

calling troll and saying that he therefore somehow became a different case of person doesnt really work for me, to be honest. he may say he was thriving on it, but i think all we saw was someone unable to back down painting themselves into a corner. the longer you push someone like that the more likely they are to feel really quite bad and wonder 'why me?' and that could lead to growth, i reckon.
it might never happen and it might take him forever, but i still reckon its worth it for that slim chance.

but yeah.
only up to a point.
after a while it gets a bit pointless.
 
 
Spaniel
15:05 / 13.01.06
if he had left me alone and i had gone after him, then i would have been harrasing him.

No one ever said anything about harrassment. Harrassment has nothing to do with what we're talking about (unless we're talking harrassment by a troll).

I know it made you feel better, Tosksy, I acknowledged as much in my last post, I just don't think that's a good enough reason for feeding the troll (once it had become clear that he was a troll). Also, should you really "feel better"? It's not as if Hawksmoor was going to give up, and it's very unlikely you could've insulted him.
As for education, do you really think the chances of you teaching him error of his ways outweighed the possibility that you were just giving him exactly what he wanted: another reason to keep it up?
 
 
Smoothly
15:38 / 13.01.06
I’ve been a bit troubled by the collective response to Hawksmoor too – not because I think anyone did or said anything that was unjustified, per se, but maybe because it seemed unnecessary and escalated things needlessly.

I think Stoatie raises a pertinent point about how sometimes a weight of numbers registering disapproval is important because it established a consensus and spreads the burden. But that I think that is more appropriate when the behaviour at issue is under-examined or the sentiment insidious. Hawksmoor’s tirades were so unambiguously (possibly intentionally) idiotic that firing back felt unseemly somehow; engaging in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent.

I've not thought this through particularly well, but I admire the way people are talking about it now. We have Hawksmoor to thank for this at least.
 
 
Our Lady Has Left the Building
17:07 / 13.01.06
I think there's an interesting debate to be had about whether a group of people in disparate locations across the globe can genuinely constitute a mob, angry or not. I think it's one of those 'real-life to online-life' analogies that, on examination, doesn't hold up.

There is also history to consider. Tom got very annoyed when an anti-Semetic troll was treated with scorn and sarcasm rather than outright anger, then surprised when the next troll came along that we were up in arms about him.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
19:33 / 13.01.06
Well, yeah, but to an extent this whole process is about working out our comfort limnits as a society. Tom was very attuned to anti-Semitism, but was not so attuned to, or did not perceive as so offensive, disparaging comments about gypsies. In both case Barbelith divided into those who thought the statements being made were acceptable and those who did not. This time around, we've had somebody who has been very dogmatically homophobic, to a weirdly obsessive level, and we have now established that in the future we can actually report that kind of behaviour and expect there to be firnm action taken. Other cases - for example, Psionicnurses' comments about gypsies, Secret Goldfish's attitude to BDSM, justified Ancient of Mu Mu's thoughts on Lesbians and Vladimir's syphillitic Indians. Which is in part why Barbelith's better anbgels have to function as a kind of echo chamber - to make comprehensible as unacceptable things which other parts of it would not think so.

All of which is kind of tricky, because we get into whose view is to be accepted, and also what extenuating circumstances exist - PsionicNurse claims to be a Hindu to deflect criticism, Hawksmoor tells us that we are racists for questioning his homophobia. Sympathetic as I am to the plight of a young black Baptist in North Carolina, this seems to me personally to be a reason to seek other perspectives - for example that of Warren Ellis. What? I'm just sayin'. That leads to questions of whether education or security is our priority, among other things...
 
 
Ganesh
23:03 / 13.01.06
I think that, if we're going to identify the attraction for some in wanting to join the burgeoning response to a shit-flinging troll in order to "get pithy", it's equally worth acknowledging the attraction of other sub-dynamics, particularly in the denouement phase, post-banning. If there's satisfaction to be had from loosing one's righteous anger as part of a 'mob' (and I'm still uncertain how we'd differentiate this from a group of people responding as individuals), then isn't there some satisfaction from then luxuriating in the 'I'm ashamed of us' vibe which inevitably (to a greater or lesser degree) follows?

Using the 'antibodies breaking down' analogy, is this perhaps how that immune response fragments?
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
09:19 / 14.01.06
isn't there some satisfaction from then luxuriating in the 'I'm ashamed of us' vibe

Not saying that's necessarily what's going on here but I've certainly observed this in the past, either during or after and Attack of the Dramawhores--an eagerness to grab the moral high-ground and present oneself as the noble champion of the underdog.

This isn't always a bad thing, in fact it can be very valuable. However it can also become rather unsavoury on occasion, relying as it sometimes does on presenting the use of hatespeech as merely a lapse of taste, as if the offender had done nothing worse than wear socks with sandals or pick hir nose.

I can't help noticing that some of the more... enthusiastic... noble champs of the underdog in the past haven't been exactly shy of a bit of drama, including people who only seem to post when there's a bit of a squabble and others who've gone on to have spectacular meltdowns of their own.
 
 
Spaniel
12:14 / 14.01.06
There's no luxuriating going on here, I can assure you. I was genuinely troubled during the Hawksmoor debarcle by the volume of responses he was getting because I firmly believe that trolls should not be fed. TBH, I'm slighly uncomfortable having this discussion *right now*, even though I recognise that it is necessary. It seems likely that someone like Hawksmoor will read it as another helping of delicious dinner.
 
 
Ganesh
12:58 / 14.01.06
Perhaps not you, Boboss, but if we're arguing that posters - either individually or en masse - get off on mobbing a troll (the 'antibody' effect), then it's worth pointing out that at least some of us seem, equally, to get off on taking a 'look at us, look at ourselves' role in the immediate aftermath. I'm suggesting that this is complex group behaviour in which several of us might be attracted to specific roles, even independently of the nature of the particular troll. As Mordant points out, some individuals seem to become vocal only in this phase.
 
 
Ganesh
13:02 / 14.01.06
I also believe trolls should not be fed but, as we seem to find ourselves loop-reiterating, there's a tension between that and addressing the problem - particularly if one is attempting to enforce a common approach throughout a community of (at least notionally) hundreds of individuals. Even saying "don't feed the troll" is a response and, as we've observed, the whole process of identifying who is a troll in the first place seems to require lengthy exposition/explanation. If that's not provided, we lay ourselves open to charges of non-transparency, etc.
 
 
Spaniel
13:21 / 14.01.06
Perhaps not you, Boboss, but if we're arguing that posters - either individually or en masse - get off on mobbing a troll (the 'antibody' effect), then it's worth pointing out that at least some of us seem, equally, to get off on taking a 'look at us, look at ourselves' role in the immediate aftermath.

I was just making clear my own position, and I understand that the line between over feeding and the necessary steps that must be taken is blurry. I just think in this instance the line was clearly, and unnecessarily, over stepped.
 
 
Ganesh
13:23 / 14.01.06
Sure. The line being an unclear, subjective one, others are likely to disagree.
 
 
ONLY NICE THINGS
13:23 / 14.01.06
Personally, I probably wouldn't say that Hawksmoor was a troll, in particular. Certainly on many other message boards his actions would not have been trollish, because nobody would have taken issue with his central offensive premise - that gays are bad. For that matter, in an environment in which uncritically favourable comment was exepected - for example, a LiveJournal friendslist, his inability to process actual engagement with his work would not have been a problem.

So. Hawksmoor, I don't think, was a troll. His aim was not to get attention through offensive behaviour. He was somebody with limited life experience and a very high regard for himself (see his post in "what are you reading", here), but for whom that regard depended entirely on external validation. Placed in an environment where that external validation was not taken sufficiently seriously or provided, he was unable to respond in a coherent fashion, and had to attempt to demonstrate that the external responses he was getting were without value. Unfortunately, his toolkit for doing so was based on the mantric repetition of a few ascriptions (stupid, not skilled in reading proper literature like Christopher Golden, fat, white, gay).

So, yes. Hawksmoor I don't think was a troll. He was somebody with limited skills reacting very badly to criticism, who also happened to be a dim homophobe. His behaviour is far closer, as I mentioned in-thread, to that of Crimes of Fashion (reaching for basically unprovable allegations to prove the worthlessness of anyone he disagrees with, e.g. that they are fat) or TeN (refusing to accept the validity of a non-favourable comment about his work unless it comes from somebody with credentials that are, realistically, unprovable on an Internet forum or who can demonstrate the worth of their own art in the eyes of the aggrieved party - I think I can say with reasonable confidence that if Smoothly Weaving had posted some photos he had taken when it was demanded in that argument, the response to them would have been dismissive - vide here) - while happily accepting favourable comments without demanding references).

So, Hawksmoor I'd say was not a troll - just a very sensitive flower who happened also to be a homophobe. This creates its own problems, but the search for attention in his case was not the driving force in his behaviour - it was the need for external approval to maintain his self-image. If he had not been banned for homophobic harrassment, he might eventually have blossomed into a troll, stormed off or worked out a way to interact with other people which allowed him to remain as a member of Barbelith.
 
 
Spaniel
13:23 / 14.01.06
Perhaps not you, Boboss, but if we're arguing that posters - either individually or en masse - get off on mobbing a troll (the 'antibody' effect), then it's worth pointing out that at least some of us seem, equally, to get off on taking a 'look at us, look at ourselves' role in the immediate aftermath.

I was just making clear my own position, and I understand that the line between over feeding and the necessary steps that must be taken is blurry. I just think in this instance the line was clearly, and unnecessarily, over stepped.
 
 
Ganesh
13:34 / 14.01.06
Haus, that'd chime with my earlier partial analogy of trolls as weeds ie. plants growing in the wrong place.
 
  

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