I think that a lot of stuff said about trolls on the first page is very on the nose. Impact plays a big part, of course, but I think attention is also a huge factor. A troll most definetly craves attention, be it positive or negative, and they'll almost always try to steer the conversation of the thread towards themselves instead of discussing the topic at hand.
Using myself as an example, the very first message board I joined many years ago (back in, oh, 1999 or so) I was definetly a troll, but I hadn't intended on being one. In those days I would often do all my posts in a sort of "Genesis P-Orridge" style (that is, replacing the word "I" with "E" and so forth) which, as you can imagine, annoyed a helluva alot of people, and the more they complained, naturally, the more I kept at it, going to outrageous lenghts to defend myself... it became comical at one point and it was really splitting the board into two divisions. Of course, I was delighted with all this, but at some point I began making friends with people and eventually dropped it. For awhile I fit in, and it seemed that I was downgraded from "troll" to mere "drama queen" (ironically, when I was posting in Gen speak initially it wasn't to annoy, I just wanted my words to stand out from the rabble so more people would read them and notice me). However, after a bit of time I eventually posted my occult views on this place, which drew the mockery of most of the people there, most of 'em being atheists and all. This led to more combat, more angst, allegations (from me) of there being an elite group at work targeting and me, until finally I just quit the forums. Then I came here.
Where, of course, the pattern resurfaced. I guess I wasn't bad at first... In the old days, I spent most of my time in the comics forum. But then I went to Temple, and that opened up a whole new can of worms. I guess I was tolerated at first, but gradually people began to tire my antics, and I myself began blowing the most minute criticisms into massive proportions (I once ended a very long online friendship with someone merely over a passing remark he made that blew up into a gigantic war of words and bad feelings on both sides). Anyway, I found myself repeating the same antics I had done on my previous forum on this new one, that is, Barbelith. This pretty much came to a head during my infamous exit a few months ago. I must say, I really did enjoy that, the fact so many people were talking about me, even if it was in less then glowing terms. As usual, extreme behaviour was the order of the day.
Strangely enough, I went back to my old forum a few months ago and I've had no real bad incidents since. In fact, I feel very little need to get attention from them anymore, and I've adapted into their system much better. Maybe because at the time I was using Barbelith as an outlet for my drama queen theatrics, so I had no need to pester my old forum anymore. Weird, eh wot?
Speaking from a quasi-troll perspective, I will say that I agree with etruscan that there is a certain thrill about goading people on (a sick thrill, but a thrill nonetheless). I think that sometimes there are people who aren't really trolls deep down, but because they have social issues that don't let them mesh well with others they perceive that they're being attacked or ostracized or being made an example of and thus they lapse into troll-like behaviour (of course, then there are people who do it deliberatly and have no interest in making friends or valuable contributions... they just want to raise hell). As for myself, oddly enough, I usually go out of my way to shun any attention (both positive and negative) at all in meatspace so perhaps it manifests itself via the internet. Hell, some people just like playing the clown... it seemed to work for Salvador Dali, though one negative aspect of that was it made people focus less on his art and more on his antics. |
