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> "You can call it trolling, some people call it 'dunking'," Mr Rathje said. I remember when first using internet forums, a "troll" was someone who posted stuf
by seanwilson 5y ago
> "You can call it trolling, some people call it 'dunking'," Mr Rathje said.
I remember when first using internet forums, a "troll" was someone who posted stuff in discussions for no other purpose than to wind people up, as if it was a sport. "Feeding the trolls" was heavily frowned upon because replying to trolls made you part of the problem. Trolling only works when people engage and post about how outraged they are.
It's interesting how people were wise to trolling before social media. It's made even worse now with the media, even misusing the world "troll" in their articles while they help to feed them and create careers out of trolling.
When was the original definition of troll forgotten along with the "don't feed the trolls" mantra? How do we bring it back so people realise they're part of the problem when they reply to obvious trolling?
- redisman 5y agoThe trolls became professional opinion havers on Twitter and millions of fools started amplifying their message
- wnevets 5y agoHow do professional opinion havers on Twitter make a living? Normally "influencers" get paid to feature products/services on their social media or YouTube adverts, I don't see that happening with these trolls. Someone must be funding them.
- JKCalhoun 5y agoI assumed they were all freelancing.
- TheTester 5y agousually "journalism" An example of this was gamergate were a lot of people that nobody cared about started spouting unhinged opinions with the clear intention of getting hateengagement from gamers, as a result they could cry and take money from progressives for their "projects" and also get nice positions in places like Kotaku because they knew how to get those hate clicks, just like vice. Turns out a lot of modern journalism consists on writing clickbait that gets engagement so a lot of those trolls just had to do the same and add some writing to pretend they actually care about issues
- sickofparadox 5y agoA lot of random blue checks on Twitter are journalists.
- wnevets 5y agoIf they're journalists then are they really internet trolls?
- whimsicalism 5y agoLarge numbers of journalists and/or pundits are internet trolls
- bluefirebrand 5y agoDepends. I'd say that Clickbait is an evolution of internet trolling, chasing engagement with outrageous claims. So in that regard, yes absolutely many online journalists are internet trolls.
- wnevets 5y agoThat doesn't sound like what the parent comment [1] was talking about. There are some fairly obvious differences between people post political garbage on social media all day and those who are looking to drive traffic to their website that serves ads. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27587768 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27587768
- brrrrrm 5y agoI think the term is a bit overloaded in this case. The examples given in the article describe commentary that the intended audience would be sympathetic towards. The content is divisive, but the audience is on the same side. I suppose "trolls" (as in "feeding the trolls") would denote folks that create divisive content that is purposefully antagonistic towards the audience.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- foolfoolz 5y agoi don’t think there’s any difference. the goal is always attention. maybe in prior internet world the best attention you could get would be a lot of replies in your special segment of myphpbb and get a 10 page post. now you can get your tweet screenshotted and and submitted to reddit or whatever and know your “dunk” got 10k upticks - same result you get attention
- nitwit005 5y agoI have a feeling the reason that quote makes little sense is because it's a portion of a multi-sentence answer to a question that is not included in the article.
- hogFeast 5y agoTrolling existed before the internet. It is just satire. And the reason this issue exists is, as I think you imply, is why trolling is effective and why satire still exists as a form of comedy: people are usually totally unconscious of their own biases, particularly when they are examining the bias of others (particularly today, admitting that you are biased is a form of self-hate when so much energy is devoted to finding biases in others...note that people equate struggle sessions with greater equality, it is all about other people). I will also say, and this is unappreciated: people who talk a lot about trolling often do not get satire at a fundamental level, they lack any ability to introspect or find humour in their own irrationality or that of others, everything is just black and white (and I will venture: afaik, this forum is also the largest congregation of such people anywhere on the internet...yc is the white whale for trolls), and there is really nothing you can do about this. Again, it is why trolling exists. Satire is one of the most important forms of comedy. There is no other form of comedy that is more closely associated with political discussion. The internet has been a wellspring for this kind of humour, it is wonderful (it is no surprise that the same people who complain about trolling are also vaguely intolerant of anyone with opposing political views to their own, anyone who opposes them is a troll and must be removed from the internet...again, this thinking predates social media by a number of years, the only change is people thinking that social media has changed anything).
- slver 5y agoTrolling can mean many things, not just satire. Probably a more annoying form of trolling is when your opponent deliberately shifts around the frame of conversation in order to make it meaningless. Formally known as "pigeon chess". It's usually kids who see themselves as masters of psychology for the shrewd manipulation they're pulling on people (pretending they're engaged in the substance of a conversation, while they aren't).
- proc0 5y agoThat's not the only definition being misused. It really seems the "divide" is creating new vernaculars or jargon, that could eventually lead to different subsets of English. This is what happens when people can't hold a conversation without having strong feelings.
- RubberMullet 5y agoA troll and trolling were already being misused back in the early 90s on Usenet and MUDs. That ship has sailed.
- tayo42 5y agoInternet culture seemed to change pretty rapidly like 8ish years ago? Trolling took in its own new definition. So did meme, it bothers me a little that meme became an image with white text on it. Watching it evolve from a dog with a rainbow background to what it became today was interesting in a way
- slg 5y ago>Internet culture seemed to change pretty rapidly like 8ish years ago? Gamergate swallowed all of the internet.
- BeFlatXIII 5y agoI’m glad you were here to say it before I had to say the G-word. Somehow, GG was the inane internet drama that never ended. Looking back, I wonder if there was something specific to GG that made it stick or if it simply was the one that happened to stick, but some permanent drama was inevitable.
- handrous 5y agoI'd call '08 or '09 the beginning of a 3rd wave for the Web (not the Internet—I'd say it's had ~5 waves). There was the early Web of directories and academics and early search engines with only a little commercial activity and a relatively small user-base; then the mid-period web starting, hell, I dunno, around the 2K bubble, roughly, dominated by (an apparently-benevolent and basically a force-for-good, kinda, at the time) Google, with home-Internet connections rapidly increasing in both count and amount of use, and normal people starting to get used to entering credit card numbers to order stuff online (I guess call this the e-commerce era, if you like); then we got the mobile-phone-and-social-media web (this one). It's very different from the earlier ones. It's overwhelmingly commercial in a way that even wave 2 wasn't. New content generation rates are off-the-charts high, but the "small" indie parts of the web are way less visible than they used to be and can be nearly impossible to find. Much of the tech is eaten with what we'd have considered, in wave 2, spyware and spam-websites, even the "legitimate" stuff. The Web isn't a place you go (a desk in your house, at the library, whatever) but is everywhere now. Smartphones changed everything. Your "8ish years ago" fits with when that shift to my wave-3-Web was pretty much complete.
- watwut 5y ago"Dont feed the trolls" never worked to stop harassement. In those situation and in politics, this rule silences everyone except the trolls. Only people who remain expressing their opinions are trolls and victims are blamed.
- sickofparadox 5y agoNot feeding the trolls almost always worked because they'd get bored and go away when no one too their bait. You can still see it in action on smaller message boards and IRC servers if you use them, where an idiot will come in and try to stir up trouble but people just keep on topic and ignore them. They leave for the next site once they figure out they're not gonna get a reaction.
- watwut 5y agoIt also worked perfectly in driving away people who were persistent targets of that trolling. Those people simply left too, because that was only option they had. The most prominent example was Kathy Sierra. And that is known only because she was know person. Less famous people just disappeared without anyone noticing, because that was only option for them.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- nextlevelwizard 5y agoSocial media brought in masses and masses usually have hard time separating the forest from the tree. Previously people saw through the guise of trolls easier and engaged with them less. Now people assume that any slight critique means that you are The Enemy (which is now synonym with troll and bot) and you disagree with them on every single issue.
- slver 5y agoLet's create a forum where we mandate strict communication style that rules out emotions, subjectivism and sticks only to pure information.