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If you're going by the original meaning of troll you're missing the fourth category; the people who post something inflammatory because everyone freaking out an

If you're going by the original meaning of troll you're missing the fourth category; the people who post something inflammatory because everyone freaking out and arguing at each other is amusing to them

JeremyBanks 8y ago
Back in the day, we just called those people assholes.
- ineedasername 8y ago
  I like it, it's catchy!
neaden 8y ago
I think that type has mostly gone away/become the third. People "ironically" posting racism seem to all just be flat out racists now. As Kurt Vonnegut said “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
- lohszvu 8y ago
  I strongly disagree. Look at the flatearth communities.
  - SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
    Shhh... people still think they are being serious. edit: Think about it this way... There are dumb people on both sides of anything, it's tough to say "only their side needs to own their idiots" when lots of stupid and people run around talking absolute nonsense about climate change when it's hot out. That doesn't mean everyone that agrees with them is as dumb or even wrong at all. If 10% of people believe it and the rest are acting - how could you tell?
    - rootusrootus 8y ago
      Only people who stop at the headline. If you go to the flatearth subreddit they're pretty clear about what they are doing. They don't quite say it explicitly, but you'd have to be pretty dense not to see the game they are playing. Though I have charitably believed in the past they are mostly having fun with each other rather than trying to troll the rest of the world.
    - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
      Sure, a lot of them are trolls, probably almost all of them at first. But the problem with pretending to be an idiot is that actual idiots will rally around you and take heart. Have you seen Beyond the Curve, the documentary about flat-earthers trying (and failing) to prove the earth is flat? You'd need pretty strong evidence to convince me that everyone in the film was in on it.
      - Pharmakon 8y ago
        There is also the tendency of mentally unstable people not getting the joke and more or less taking over the meme. Then the profit-seekers and cult leader types emerge, and suddenly what was a joke is a movement. On a much smaller scale the same thing happens with satirist news outlets, and the process is: Outlet makes a joke (for a real example “Joe Biden is refusing to leave the White House and has armed and barricaded himself.”) Joke is spread devoid of context, still as a joke. Trolls get a chuckle by posting it to some extremist group. Extremist group doesn’t get the joke and adopts the narrative, fitting it into existing ideology. Pizzagate and QAnon are great examples of this process. The other process is that schizophrenics dig up old ideas to fit their current delusions, such as “Orgone” and “Chemtrails.” Some of these ideas fit into the delusional ideation of non-mentally ill groups and it becomes a widespread conspiracy theory. Note that this can all be very profitable, if you look at people like Glenn Beck, Alex Jones, and David Icke.
  - snazz 8y ago
    I think you’re both right. Being an ironic flat-earther is easier than being an ironic racist, especially since sarcasm doesn’t transmit very well over text, especially on contentious topics.
  - ineedasername 8y ago
    What the heck is with the resurgence of this? Where is it coming from? I remember stuff like this, flat earth sites and the time cube thing [0] in the earlier days of the internet, but can't understand where it's coming from now. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Cube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Cube
    - astine 8y ago
      The time cube was the product of a single, elderly, schizophrenic man. People in that demographic post to Facebook these days, I think. Flat earth, I think, is caused by crazy people finding it easier to find each other with the Internet and social media, and putting together communities on the Internet.
      - cthalupa 8y ago
        The "main" Flat Earth Society (tfes.org) isn't made up of people that believe that the earth is flat - they are trolls. I'm sure there are plenty of 'True Believers' out there, but they're just as fringe as any other conspiracy theory.
        y4mi 8y ago
        It started as a joke by trolls. It's debatable if it still is
    - grawprog 8y ago
      I'm guessing it comes from people who have never been in an airplane, on a very tall mountain or in open prairies. Ya know...all those places you can actually see the Earth curve at the horizon...
    - darkpuma 8y ago
      It's a trend, like yo-yos or pokemon. People see other people doing it, it looks fun, so they join in. Facebook and youtube have made it easy for people to join in on the fun. What you need to understand is that for a minority of people who take truth, facts, reason and science very seriously, flat earth is infuriating. But for a lot of people who are just looking to have some fun, it turns out to be a lot of fun. The protests from the first group that you shouldn't joke about things like that, that it's wrong to be wrong, etc just sweeten the deal for the people having fun. It's trolling in the classic sense. For most of them. Of course when you have people pretending to be idiots inevitably a few real idiots will join in, thinking themselves in good company. But for the most part flat earther arguments are constructed with obvious comedic intent that very serious people seem blind to. Or you can think of it this way: being wrong is a taboo, and some people enjoy challenging that taboo.
- umvi 8y ago
  > I think that type has mostly gone away/become the third I think you underestimate the entertainment value of intentionally posting inflammatory things. It's fun to play devil's advocate. That doesn't mean you believe it.
  - ep103 8y ago
    You can't forget Poe's law, though
  - anigbrowl 8y ago
    Regardless of what one believes, posting specifically to inflame or upset people is a form of aggression. Where aggressive debate is a norm accepted by all participants this can manifest as interesting or even productive competition, but where it is unilaterally inflicted on unwilling respondents it quickly generates into sadism.
    - dvt 8y ago
      > Regardless of what one believes, posting specifically to inflame or upset people is a form of aggression. This is a ridiculous, not to mention untenable, position. I take it you never read Socrates? He saw great value in poking and prodding -- being the proverbial gadfly.
      - JeremyBanks 8y ago
        Socratic inquiry and racist trolls are only similar if you refuse to think beyond the shallowest surface description.
        dvt 8y ago
        I'm not going to defend this straw-man. Refer to what I quoted.
        PavlovsCat 8y ago
        > posting specifically to inflame or upset people That's not what Socrates did, was it? I thought he was just making observations and asked questions he thought had merit, despite knowing it would upset some people. But the objective wasn't to upset people in the sense of them feeling bad, more like medicine that tastes bitter but is beneficial in the long run. What I do see a lot is that people impute a bad motivation for a question or claim that allows them to dismiss it without actually having to answer or challenge it, so today, Socrates surely would be called a troll by many. Wouldn't make him one though.
- pessimizer 8y ago
  > I think that type has mostly gone away/become the third. Not a chance. I think that a lot of kids with socialization problems who grew up spending a lot of time on the internet took trolls seriously, and built very strange worldviews from that assumption of earnestness. But actual trolls are still everywhere, and their trollishness can be measured by the inverse of the ratio of their typing to your typing. That ratio can nearly reach zero with the use of copypasta.
- unethical_ban 8y ago
  Agreed. I was just stating this to some friends. I used to read the chans and their noxious crap, thinking it was funny anti-authority "rebellious" trolling. Now you have people announcing their mass shooting on them, and hundreds of posts applauding it while talking about the Jewish conspiracies. I think that when you troll and joke enough, if it ever was a joke, you can get sucked into it. Especially teenagers and others who are looking for certainty, or apply "logic" to some narrow ideology that finally "gets it." So yeah, there is some "old school" trolling where people just like to see others get riled up, but that is far less than the first three.
ucaetano 8y ago
If you're going by the original meaning of troll you're missing the fifth category: monstrous cave-dwelling creatures. :)
- braythwayt 8y ago
  Well, actually... In the Internet sense of the word, the trolls in question live under bridges and spring out to surprise those who would cross with unpleasant demands and behaviour. Not cave-dwellers at all. —— Hey, this is Hacker News, if we can't bikeshed the etymology of "troll," what use is this medium?
  - ucaetano 8y ago
    > In the Internet sense of the word But that's not the original meaning :)
    - braythwayt 8y ago
      It depends on "how original," stories about trolls under bridges go back a long way, but if we go WAY back, we get the word applyimng to many different mythical creatures: "The term is used to denote various beings, such as a jötunn or mountain-dweller, a witch, an abnormally strong or large or ugly person, an evil spirit, a ghost, a blámaðr, a magical boar, a heathen demi-god, a demon, a brunnmigi, or a berserker." I think that over time, and thanks to various "fairy tales," we have settled on Trolls as he mountain/riock/cave-dwellers who are turned to stone if exposed to sunlight. Sadly, the Internet Troll multiplies when given attention. Sunlight does not disinfect social media.
  - kps 8y ago
    The internet sense comes from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolling_(fishing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolling_(fishing) rather than the bridge dwellers. “Trolling is a method of fishing where one or more fishing lines, baited with lures or bait fish, are drawn through the water.”
    - 8y ago
giancarlostoro 8y ago
That's part of the premise of that one South Park episode / season about the 2016 elections[0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skank_Hunt#Plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skank_Hunt#Plot
howard941 8y ago
Let me gently disagree. The internet etymology is based on the fishing activity.
mcphage 8y ago
How can you distinguish between the 3rd and 4th categories? How do they behave differently?

JeremyBanks 8y ago

Back in the day, we just called those people assholes.

ineedasername 8y ago
I like it, it's catchy!

neaden 8y ago

I think that type has mostly gone away/become the third. People "ironically" posting racism seem to all just be flat out racists now. As Kurt Vonnegut said “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

lohszvu 8y ago
I strongly disagree. Look at the flatearth communities.
- SlowRobotAhead 8y ago
  Shhh... people still think they are being serious. edit: Think about it this way... There are dumb people on both sides of anything, it's tough to say "only their side needs to own their idiots" when lots of stupid and people run around talking absolute nonsense about climate change when it's hot out. That doesn't mean everyone that agrees with them is as dumb or even wrong at all. If 10% of people believe it and the rest are acting - how could you tell?
  - rootusrootus 8y ago
    Only people who stop at the headline. If you go to the flatearth subreddit they're pretty clear about what they are doing. They don't quite say it explicitly, but you'd have to be pretty dense not to see the game they are playing. Though I have charitably believed in the past they are mostly having fun with each other rather than trying to troll the rest of the world.
  - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
    Sure, a lot of them are trolls, probably almost all of them at first. But the problem with pretending to be an idiot is that actual idiots will rally around you and take heart. Have you seen Beyond the Curve, the documentary about flat-earthers trying (and failing) to prove the earth is flat? You'd need pretty strong evidence to convince me that everyone in the film was in on it.
    - Pharmakon 8y ago
      There is also the tendency of mentally unstable people not getting the joke and more or less taking over the meme. Then the profit-seekers and cult leader types emerge, and suddenly what was a joke is a movement. On a much smaller scale the same thing happens with satirist news outlets, and the process is: Outlet makes a joke (for a real example “Joe Biden is refusing to leave the White House and has armed and barricaded himself.”) Joke is spread devoid of context, still as a joke. Trolls get a chuckle by posting it to some extremist group. Extremist group doesn’t get the joke and adopts the narrative, fitting it into existing ideology. Pizzagate and QAnon are great examples of this process. The other process is that schizophrenics dig up old ideas to fit their current delusions, such as “Orgone” and “Chemtrails.” Some of these ideas fit into the delusional ideation of non-mentally ill groups and it becomes a widespread conspiracy theory. Note that this can all be very profitable, if you look at people like Glenn Beck, Alex Jones, and David Icke.
- snazz 8y ago
  I think you’re both right. Being an ironic flat-earther is easier than being an ironic racist, especially since sarcasm doesn’t transmit very well over text, especially on contentious topics.
- ineedasername 8y ago
  What the heck is with the resurgence of this? Where is it coming from? I remember stuff like this, flat earth sites and the time cube thing [0] in the earlier days of the internet, but can't understand where it's coming from now. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Cube https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Cube
  - astine 8y ago
    The time cube was the product of a single, elderly, schizophrenic man. People in that demographic post to Facebook these days, I think. Flat earth, I think, is caused by crazy people finding it easier to find each other with the Internet and social media, and putting together communities on the Internet.
    - cthalupa 8y ago
      The "main" Flat Earth Society (tfes.org) isn't made up of people that believe that the earth is flat - they are trolls. I'm sure there are plenty of 'True Believers' out there, but they're just as fringe as any other conspiracy theory.
      - y4mi 8y ago
        It started as a joke by trolls. It's debatable if it still is
  - grawprog 8y ago
    I'm guessing it comes from people who have never been in an airplane, on a very tall mountain or in open prairies. Ya know...all those places you can actually see the Earth curve at the horizon...
  - darkpuma 8y ago
    It's a trend, like yo-yos or pokemon. People see other people doing it, it looks fun, so they join in. Facebook and youtube have made it easy for people to join in on the fun. What you need to understand is that for a minority of people who take truth, facts, reason and science very seriously, flat earth is infuriating. But for a lot of people who are just looking to have some fun, it turns out to be a lot of fun. The protests from the first group that you shouldn't joke about things like that, that it's wrong to be wrong, etc just sweeten the deal for the people having fun. It's trolling in the classic sense. For most of them. Of course when you have people pretending to be idiots inevitably a few real idiots will join in, thinking themselves in good company. But for the most part flat earther arguments are constructed with obvious comedic intent that very serious people seem blind to. Or you can think of it this way: being wrong is a taboo, and some people enjoy challenging that taboo.
umvi 8y ago
> I think that type has mostly gone away/become the third I think you underestimate the entertainment value of intentionally posting inflammatory things. It's fun to play devil's advocate. That doesn't mean you believe it.
- ep103 8y ago
  You can't forget Poe's law, though
- anigbrowl 8y ago
  Regardless of what one believes, posting specifically to inflame or upset people is a form of aggression. Where aggressive debate is a norm accepted by all participants this can manifest as interesting or even productive competition, but where it is unilaterally inflicted on unwilling respondents it quickly generates into sadism.
  - dvt 8y ago
    > Regardless of what one believes, posting specifically to inflame or upset people is a form of aggression. This is a ridiculous, not to mention untenable, position. I take it you never read Socrates? He saw great value in poking and prodding -- being the proverbial gadfly.
    - JeremyBanks 8y ago
      Socratic inquiry and racist trolls are only similar if you refuse to think beyond the shallowest surface description.
      - dvt 8y ago
        I'm not going to defend this straw-man. Refer to what I quoted.
        PavlovsCat 8y ago
        > posting specifically to inflame or upset people That's not what Socrates did, was it? I thought he was just making observations and asked questions he thought had merit, despite knowing it would upset some people. But the objective wasn't to upset people in the sense of them feeling bad, more like medicine that tastes bitter but is beneficial in the long run. What I do see a lot is that people impute a bad motivation for a question or claim that allows them to dismiss it without actually having to answer or challenge it, so today, Socrates surely would be called a troll by many. Wouldn't make him one though.
pessimizer 8y ago
> I think that type has mostly gone away/become the third. Not a chance. I think that a lot of kids with socialization problems who grew up spending a lot of time on the internet took trolls seriously, and built very strange worldviews from that assumption of earnestness. But actual trolls are still everywhere, and their trollishness can be measured by the inverse of the ratio of their typing to your typing. That ratio can nearly reach zero with the use of copypasta.
unethical_ban 8y ago
Agreed. I was just stating this to some friends. I used to read the chans and their noxious crap, thinking it was funny anti-authority "rebellious" trolling. Now you have people announcing their mass shooting on them, and hundreds of posts applauding it while talking about the Jewish conspiracies. I think that when you troll and joke enough, if it ever was a joke, you can get sucked into it. Especially teenagers and others who are looking for certainty, or apply "logic" to some narrow ideology that finally "gets it." So yeah, there is some "old school" trolling where people just like to see others get riled up, but that is far less than the first three.

ucaetano 8y ago

If you're going by the original meaning of troll you're missing the fifth category: monstrous cave-dwelling creatures. :)

braythwayt 8y ago
Well, actually... In the Internet sense of the word, the trolls in question live under bridges and spring out to surprise those who would cross with unpleasant demands and behaviour. Not cave-dwellers at all. —— Hey, this is Hacker News, if we can't bikeshed the etymology of "troll," what use is this medium?
- ucaetano 8y ago
  > In the Internet sense of the word But that's not the original meaning :)
  - braythwayt 8y ago
    It depends on "how original," stories about trolls under bridges go back a long way, but if we go WAY back, we get the word applyimng to many different mythical creatures: "The term is used to denote various beings, such as a jötunn or mountain-dweller, a witch, an abnormally strong or large or ugly person, an evil spirit, a ghost, a blámaðr, a magical boar, a heathen demi-god, a demon, a brunnmigi, or a berserker." I think that over time, and thanks to various "fairy tales," we have settled on Trolls as he mountain/riock/cave-dwellers who are turned to stone if exposed to sunlight. Sadly, the Internet Troll multiplies when given attention. Sunlight does not disinfect social media.
- kps 8y ago
  The internet sense comes from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolling_(fishing) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolling_(fishing) rather than the bridge dwellers. “Trolling is a method of fishing where one or more fishing lines, baited with lures or bait fish, are drawn through the water.”
  - 8y ago

giancarlostoro 8y ago

That's part of the premise of that one South Park episode / season about the 2016 elections[0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skank_Hunt#Plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skank_Hunt#Plot

howard941 8y ago

Let me gently disagree. The internet etymology is based on the fishing activity.

mcphage 8y ago

How can you distinguish between the 3rd and 4th categories? How do they behave differently?