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UllrsIshtar -> RE: What's wrong with Narcissism anyway? (3/3/2016 10:19:16 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Spiritedsub2
I would add to this that replying to troll posts with good substantive answers just gives them attention and keeps them coming around for more. Where does muscles get this kind of attention anywhere else in his life? Nowhere.
Ignoring trolls never makes them go away. What it does is make them escalate their trolling, by either posting more, or by posting more offensive, and more outrageous things. Their goal is to get a reaction. They won't go away until they get that reaction. If you ignore them and steal them of the attention they're looking for, they see it as a challenge and will just up the ante more and more... even if it takes starting 50 threads all at ones so that the entire board is nothing but their posts.
Escalation upon being ignored has happened time and time again when people merely ignore troll posts, on forums all over the interwebz. The escalating always continues until the troll is successfully banned. Seeing that CollarChat isn't going to successfully ban him, based on past history, ignoring isn't going to work, it will just escalate stuff more.
Ignoring doesn't work, despite what people claim, because ignoring sends the message to the troll that they just haven't YET been outrageous enough to get the reaction they're looking for, meaning that they should just troll even more.
The only thing that works is giving them the reaction they're looking for, but doing so in a boring, unsatisfactory way. Not getting riled up, not joining in with 'joke' posts, not complaining about the trolling (which shows you're annoyed, with satisfies them), not pleading with others to not reply (which again shows annoyance, which is what they're looking for).
Instead, you give them attention in a boring, dry, factual way. You treat the post as if it's real, and valid, and give the best advice you can.
Doing that does 3 things:
- It shows people reading along what the 'community standard' on the subject is.
- It starves the troll of the attention they're looking for, because all people are doing is posting as they normally would, as if there isn't even a troll post there.
- It gives the thread the potential to actually turn into a decent discussion, because of thread drift.
If they step up the trolling in response to that cut and dry way of dealing with them, you just respond with more cut and dry stuff, again just posting as if it's a normal post, and again showing by example what you think the 'community standard' on the subject is.
The worse thing you can do to a troll is act like you're take them seriously, stay objective, and give the advice you would have given if it was a serious post.
Because taking them seriously, and giving good and objective advice, is the one thing they want nobody to do. They don't want people to continue posting as if it's business-as-usual, because it's the one thing that shows that people aren't getting upset, and aren't bothered by the troll at all.
Meanwhile, if you reply as it's a serious post, and somebody else sees value in what you said, they might reply to that instead of the OP, and before you know it, you actually have a decent discussion going on.
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