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This is very neat, and the last paragraph is indeed very heavy-hitting. It's always hard to read that some of our societies greatest present-day problems are so

This is very neat, and the last paragraph is indeed very heavy-hitting. It's always hard to read that some of our societies greatest present-day problems are so many thousands of years old. However, I think this definition is narrow and only encapsulates part of the modern definition of 'trolling'. Today, 'trolling' is used as a weapon of war, not only in debate with other individual people. Trolling is as much a mechanism of creating emotional trauma among a large population as it is a mechanism for 'debating' in bad faith. Modern trolls will post violent content, often based on lies, in order to get an emotional rise out of a population. This is a large-scale effect that wastes huge amounts of people's time and energy, as they 'debate' with these soldiers of war whose task at hand is to create unnecessary emotional pain and waste the time of their enemy. Yes, trolling is also happening on a more individual 'debate' level still, but narrowing our notion of trolling down to these ancient definitions is doing a major disservice to our modern understanding of how language is used in debate.

h2odragon 7y ago
I don't think anyone is attempting to narrow the definition of trolling; but in general any appeal to more nuanced understanding is worthwhile too so don't take this as disagreeing with you. I note that "doctrine" was also an important element of the definitions offered and regret that we do not question our doctrine (and its sources) enough even now.
labgrown 7y ago
for a definition to be useful it needs to be as narrow as possible, otherwise declaring any form of argument you don't like as trolling would be...
- damnyou 7y ago
  That is just not true. Broader definitions are actually very useful when you're trying to describe general principles (like in law) — using a word that's too narrowly defined can limit the scope of what you're saying.
  - labgrown 7y ago
    That's the difference between a principle and a definition, law has both - criminal offenses for example are more defined than the principle of tort, the more you want something to be useful as an accusation the more narrowly defined it needs to be or you just end up with a moral panic.
ljm 7y ago
In a way I feel like I might have misunderstood something within my self. I agree with the assessment but I never connected trolling and trauma, because my personal concept of trolling is essentially a continual escalation of reductio ad absurdum. In that sense it's not really trolling or sarcasm, it's more of a way of livening up overly-serious conversations. I should probably not refer to that as trolling as the intention isn't to fuck people off, gaslight them, traumatise them...but to soften the mood.
coldtea 7y ago
>Trolling is as much a mechanism of creating emotional trauma among a large population as it is a mechanism for 'debating' in bad faith. Perhaps this was not present in older societies (and other countries today) because people were not as touchy feely as the current generations... And I'm not trolling. I seriously think modern western societies are too snow-flakey and touchy feely for their own good. It's like going out in life expecting padded roads, walls, and everything, lest you ever get hurt... And that's despite older societies having it much harder, and having much more difficult problems to be "traumatized" with...
- pranjalv123 7y ago
  The argument here is "I shouldn't avoid emotionally traumatizing you because at some point, someone else in the future may emotionally traumatize you". Perhaps there's a case to be made for exposing people to controversial or offensive ideas in a controlled environment to prepare for encountering them in an uncontrolled environment - in fact, this is frequently called a "safe space" and ridiculed by people who believe that modern societies are too "snow-flakey"! But that's certainly not what internet trolls are doing.
- marstomorrow 7y ago
  > It's like going out in life expecting padded roads, walls, and everything, lest you ever get hurt... What? How offensive. Let me be clear, then. The United States is committing a genocide against minorities as we speak and it is enabled and emboldened by "trolls". This is not touchy-feely. This is children in cages, separated illegally from their families and put into places of extreme disrepair, unhealthy conditions, etc, while the President goes on TV to state that machine guns would be a more "effective solution". This is not touchy feely or snowflaky stuff and I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. What I'm talking about are trolls going online an on TV to spread messages of hate and cruelty. This directly results in human suffering and death of innocent people. There is no logic behind talking about using machine guns to kill people who are trying to legally migrate to your country. To make those statements is to wage a weapon of war and to do it online and on TV en masse is a new kind of trolling that is physically dangerous. Your ..... dismissal of the problems of youth....and use of .... to not finish...sentences makes it difficult to understand your point. Trolling in the modern era has nothing to do with any of this "touchy feely" or "snow-flakey" rubbish. It has to do with enabling genocide. Trolls normalize bad behavior to the point where it goes unpunished. Bad behavior to the extreme, unpunished from the top, for years on end, can and does result in really bad things like genocide. I'm not making leaps here. This is real, it is physical, it is urgent, and it matters.

h2odragon 7y ago

I don't think anyone is attempting to narrow the definition of trolling; but in general any appeal to more nuanced understanding is worthwhile too so don't take this as disagreeing with you. I note that "doctrine" was also an important element of the definitions offered and regret that we do not question our doctrine (and its sources) enough even now.

labgrown 7y ago

for a definition to be useful it needs to be as narrow as possible, otherwise declaring any form of argument you don't like as trolling would be...

damnyou 7y ago
That is just not true. Broader definitions are actually very useful when you're trying to describe general principles (like in law) — using a word that's too narrowly defined can limit the scope of what you're saying.
- labgrown 7y ago
  That's the difference between a principle and a definition, law has both - criminal offenses for example are more defined than the principle of tort, the more you want something to be useful as an accusation the more narrowly defined it needs to be or you just end up with a moral panic.

ljm 7y ago

In a way I feel like I might have misunderstood something within my self. I agree with the assessment but I never connected trolling and trauma, because my personal concept of trolling is essentially a continual escalation of reductio ad absurdum. In that sense it's not really trolling or sarcasm, it's more of a way of livening up overly-serious conversations. I should probably not refer to that as trolling as the intention isn't to fuck people off, gaslight them, traumatise them...but to soften the mood.

coldtea 7y ago

>Trolling is as much a mechanism of creating emotional trauma among a large population as it is a mechanism for 'debating' in bad faith. Perhaps this was not present in older societies (and other countries today) because people were not as touchy feely as the current generations... And I'm not trolling. I seriously think modern western societies are too snow-flakey and touchy feely for their own good. It's like going out in life expecting padded roads, walls, and everything, lest you ever get hurt... And that's despite older societies having it much harder, and having much more difficult problems to be "traumatized" with...

pranjalv123 7y ago
The argument here is "I shouldn't avoid emotionally traumatizing you because at some point, someone else in the future may emotionally traumatize you". Perhaps there's a case to be made for exposing people to controversial or offensive ideas in a controlled environment to prepare for encountering them in an uncontrolled environment - in fact, this is frequently called a "safe space" and ridiculed by people who believe that modern societies are too "snow-flakey"! But that's certainly not what internet trolls are doing.
marstomorrow 7y ago
> It's like going out in life expecting padded roads, walls, and everything, lest you ever get hurt... What? How offensive. Let me be clear, then. The United States is committing a genocide against minorities as we speak and it is enabled and emboldened by "trolls". This is not touchy-feely. This is children in cages, separated illegally from their families and put into places of extreme disrepair, unhealthy conditions, etc, while the President goes on TV to state that machine guns would be a more "effective solution". This is not touchy feely or snowflaky stuff and I honestly have no idea what you're talking about. What I'm talking about are trolls going online an on TV to spread messages of hate and cruelty. This directly results in human suffering and death of innocent people. There is no logic behind talking about using machine guns to kill people who are trying to legally migrate to your country. To make those statements is to wage a weapon of war and to do it online and on TV en masse is a new kind of trolling that is physically dangerous. Your ..... dismissal of the problems of youth....and use of .... to not finish...sentences makes it difficult to understand your point. Trolling in the modern era has nothing to do with any of this "touchy feely" or "snow-flakey" rubbish. It has to do with enabling genocide. Trolls normalize bad behavior to the point where it goes unpunished. Bad behavior to the extreme, unpunished from the top, for years on end, can and does result in really bad things like genocide. I'm not making leaps here. This is real, it is physical, it is urgent, and it matters.