Epytropos
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Joined: 7/23/2011
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Kirata
I'm going to quibble with this "stop feeding the trolls" meme.
First of all, it is not infrequently the case that one person's "troll" is another person's hero. Who gets to decide who the "trolls" are? You? No thanks. And what's this "baby's first Internet" crap? Who gets to decide what posters another person may "semi-reasonably engage with," and who deserves to be insulted for not bowing to that wisdom? Seems to me there's a bit of trollishness right there.
Secondly, the theory behind the advice (I keep hearing) is that the troll will go away if it doesn't get any attention. But a little attention goes a long way, and it is simply unrealistic to imagine that everyone will agree on who is a troll completely worthy of being uniformly ignored by all concerned. So let's stick with reality, shall we? This whole "don't feed the trolls" theme is a sanctimonious waste of breath.
More seriously, however, the theory is wrong.
I once belonged to a Theology Forum that became infested by Fundie trolls. The membership consisted of priests, theologians, Buddhist monks, university professors, etc., who quietly ignored the trolls after failing in their attempts to engage them in a civil and substantive way. The trolls stayed. They disrupted every discussion, and were proud to announce (rather frequently, I might add) that the absence of argumentative responses simply proved that everyone knew they were right.
In my experience, there are only two ways to deal with trolls. Ban them, or squash them like the pestilent little pricks that they are. Given the unlikelihood of there being universal agreement on who is a troll sufficiently worthy of being banned, and given my deep dislike for censorship, I am not sanguine about banning as a solution. That leaves squashing them, exposing their idiocy and hubris at every turn (assuming you can, of course, which is always a detail worth considering when branding people trolls).
Simply put, peer pressure works. It may not work fast, and it may not work completely, but it is the only thing I have ever seen have any noticeable effect. Understandably, many people will prefer not to engage with the more trollish sorts. But there are always some who will take them on, and give them a nice lunch for their trouble. That's the important thing when dealing with trolls, feeding them the right diet.
K.
A troll is someone who is simply posting to piss people off. It isn't relevant what they're posting, merely that they're posting it for that purpose. The only people to whom they would be a "hero" would be someone who enjoyed seeing their fellow forum members being trolled - in other words, a latent troll. The only reason there would be disagreement on who is and is not a troll would be in the case that some people were incapable of reading a situation correctly, which is precisely the problem I'm bemoaning.
As to "baby's first internet," lighten up.
As to social pressure and so forth, if that actually worked the people you were dealing with were not trolls, they were merely stupid. The whole point of trolling is to inflame that sort of so-called "peer pressure." Pissing people off such that they attempt to shout the troll down is the entire point of the exercise. There is no amount of success that is going to make a troll stop trolling unless you can actually make them frightened for their real-life selves, and if the Police Benevolent Society forums can't do it neither can you.
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