8 ms·

Trolling To Win: Can trolling work better than asking for help?

76 points by tc 18y ago

tc 18y ago
I have to admit that I reliably fall for this one, particularly in one-on-one exchanges with friends or acquaintances. Perhaps the best reply would actually be, "yep, you're right, Linux/Lisp/Emacs does suck," but even just typing that now rubbed strongly against my natural evangelism.
- lallysingh 18y ago
  Sometimes all I can do is say "Excuse me," and walk away. Then I call my therapist/support vendor for the next three hours, sobbing about deep emotional scarring I had from DOS when I was a small child.
petercooper 18y ago
The egotistical urge to correct misinformation appears to commonly be stronger than the philanthropic urge to help.
- d0mine 18y ago
  A corresponding webcomic: http://www.xkcd.com/386/ http://www.xkcd.com/386/
  - jcromartie 18y ago
    ^ taped up in my workspace
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- ardell 18y ago
  This seems to be changing on sites like HN and Stack Overflow. The only difference I can see is that the moderators intentionally guide the discussion away from trolling. Are there other factors here that I'm missing?
  - jmatt 18y ago
    This reminds me: http://www.paulgraham.com/trolls.html http://www.paulgraham.com/trolls.html
  - petercooper 18y ago
    I think the points systems on such sites give a different incentive. Many people help just to help, but others take part primarily for the point gaining (which rapidly becomes addictive) or to gain some sense of achieving more than others. Despite these motivations, if the ultimate result is a good one, I see no harm.
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
- prakash 18y ago
  so, why did you write a book? It was quite good btw.
  - petercooper 18y ago
    It was one of my ambitions to have a book published, so the primary motivation was achievement. My book has helped thousands of people learn to program, but if teaching were my primary motivation (it was certainly a secondary one), I'd have written and released it for free online (and even then the motivation might have more been fame and recognition than true philanthropy). As it is, the second edition should be coming along next year, and I'm hoping to have the e-book version freely available for anyone to download. Primary reason? To promote the book and get people to buy the print version. That more people (who might not be able to afford the book) can learn is awesome, but that's a cool secondary goal :) Sorry if this all sounds a bit dry, but I think it's how people truly think. I have good intentions, but they're usually for me (and my family) first, and then if other people benefit, awesome! This is why it's hard to make decisions based on other people's intentions if you don't consider how people really think. With few exceptions, we're all more selfish than we think (selfish in a good way, often).
    - mattmcknight 18y ago
      Not to mention, writing a book gives you more credibility when you have to tell someone their operating system is an overpriced box of bugs, therefore assisting the ego in defeating the forces of cognitive dissonance that seem motivate people to defend their own positions.
    - mattmaroon 18y ago
      Your book has fantastic Amazon reviews. I think you just sold me.
thorax 18y ago
"Frequent Troll Statements" might work better than FAQs for some projects. jQuery is hard to use for remote AJAX requests django doesn't even support memcached PERL has the worst support for SOAP of any language out there
- tocomment 18y ago
  FTS "Frequently Trolled Statements" ?
rdrimmie 18y ago
A slightly less trollish alternative, which I attribute to Penny Arcade but can't easily source, is to post the wrong answer to a question. This prompts people to prove themselves smarter than you by providing the correct answer. In the example I remember, it was related to finding quest details in World of Warcraft. If you ask in General chat "where is the foo?" you will be met with flames and rtfm-style responses, but if you say "the foo is in [wrong location]" out of the blue, you'll receive a cacophony of corrections.
time_management 18y ago
That's not trolling. It's abrasive as hell, but the ultimate purpose of that behavior is to improve discussion.
byrneseyeview 18y ago
It doesn't always work. Watch: news.ycombinator doesn't even let you downvote warmed-over reddit stories.
- thorax 18y ago
  Well, that's the other side of the coin. Sometimes the troll will spur a change in the tools/app itself to support the scenario.
- MaysonL 18y ago
  Oh, yeah? I just saw one of those with 0 points! (How did that happen???).
ruslan 18y ago
In my IRC days saying word "linux" aloud on #unix will get you kicked instantly no matter what you say about the OS. And yes, asking for obvious will get you kicked as well ;-)
antiform 18y ago
When I first moved to the Bay Area, my roommate told me that the best way to find good places to eat and drink was to go onto a foodie forum like Chowhound and say something along the lines of "At [X], I had the best [Y] I've ever had!" because before you know it, you would have dozens of responses saying how wrong you were and among those responses, you'd find the best places to get [Y]. Is this trolling? Probably. But now I have an extensive list of great Bay Area eateries.
silentbicycle 18y ago
This is really unfortunate, on several levels. It's probably also self-reinforcing once it starts, because once a mailing list, IRC channel, etc. has a reputation of being populated by abrasive know-it-alls, new members have less of an incentive to bother being civil. Also, people mock-trolling to get useful answers is incredibly irritating to everyone else, which probably makes the overall attitude even less patient with newbie questions. I don't know of a better way around this, either, but it reminds me of an offhand comment somebody made recently about how once cultural forces take a certain amount of bribery and corruption for granted, doing things honestly at all becomes much more difficult.
ntoshev 18y ago
The RTFMan responses are one of the worst things in Linux culture. Man pages are an exhaustive reference about what you can do with commands, that's true. But they are not written in a helpful way: you pretty much have to read it all every time in order to see what you need. If Google had the same attitude with their search, they would be satisfied with a query for "george bush" that returns the page of some random George Bush out there, you would have to add "US president" to get what you need.
raphar 18y ago
It's a technique very used by some bosses (that dont know shxt). It's specially effective with young/big-ego !! developers. The modus operandi would be saying thay some work you did is crap. After that you provide a detailed report on the advantages of your work. And after that, he can tell his own boss what are the wonders he is acomplishing, all without reading a single line of the related documentation. !! replace young/big-ego with any of these: ninja, guru, hacker, elvis, etc. :D
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]

76 points by tc 18y ago

tc 18y ago

I have to admit that I reliably fall for this one, particularly in one-on-one exchanges with friends or acquaintances. Perhaps the best reply would actually be, "yep, you're right, Linux/Lisp/Emacs does suck," but even just typing that now rubbed strongly against my natural evangelism.

lallysingh 18y ago
Sometimes all I can do is say "Excuse me," and walk away. Then I call my therapist/support vendor for the next three hours, sobbing about deep emotional scarring I had from DOS when I was a small child.

petercooper 18y ago

The egotistical urge to correct misinformation appears to commonly be stronger than the philanthropic urge to help.

d0mine 18y ago
A corresponding webcomic: http://www.xkcd.com/386/ http://www.xkcd.com/386/
- jcromartie 18y ago
  ^ taped up in my workspace
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
ardell 18y ago
This seems to be changing on sites like HN and Stack Overflow. The only difference I can see is that the moderators intentionally guide the discussion away from trolling. Are there other factors here that I'm missing?
- jmatt 18y ago
  This reminds me: http://www.paulgraham.com/trolls.html http://www.paulgraham.com/trolls.html
- petercooper 18y ago
  I think the points systems on such sites give a different incentive. Many people help just to help, but others take part primarily for the point gaining (which rapidly becomes addictive) or to gain some sense of achieving more than others. Despite these motivations, if the ultimate result is a good one, I see no harm.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
prakash 18y ago
so, why did you write a book? It was quite good btw.
- petercooper 18y ago
  It was one of my ambitions to have a book published, so the primary motivation was achievement. My book has helped thousands of people learn to program, but if teaching were my primary motivation (it was certainly a secondary one), I'd have written and released it for free online (and even then the motivation might have more been fame and recognition than true philanthropy). As it is, the second edition should be coming along next year, and I'm hoping to have the e-book version freely available for anyone to download. Primary reason? To promote the book and get people to buy the print version. That more people (who might not be able to afford the book) can learn is awesome, but that's a cool secondary goal :) Sorry if this all sounds a bit dry, but I think it's how people truly think. I have good intentions, but they're usually for me (and my family) first, and then if other people benefit, awesome! This is why it's hard to make decisions based on other people's intentions if you don't consider how people really think. With few exceptions, we're all more selfish than we think (selfish in a good way, often).
  - mattmcknight 18y ago
    Not to mention, writing a book gives you more credibility when you have to tell someone their operating system is an overpriced box of bugs, therefore assisting the ego in defeating the forces of cognitive dissonance that seem motivate people to defend their own positions.
  - mattmaroon 18y ago
    Your book has fantastic Amazon reviews. I think you just sold me.

thorax 18y ago

"Frequent Troll Statements" might work better than FAQs for some projects. jQuery is hard to use for remote AJAX requests django doesn't even support memcached PERL has the worst support for SOAP of any language out there

tocomment 18y ago
FTS "Frequently Trolled Statements" ?

rdrimmie 18y ago

A slightly less trollish alternative, which I attribute to Penny Arcade but can't easily source, is to post the wrong answer to a question. This prompts people to prove themselves smarter than you by providing the correct answer. In the example I remember, it was related to finding quest details in World of Warcraft. If you ask in General chat "where is the foo?" you will be met with flames and rtfm-style responses, but if you say "the foo is in [wrong location]" out of the blue, you'll receive a cacophony of corrections.

time_management 18y ago

That's not trolling. It's abrasive as hell, but the ultimate purpose of that behavior is to improve discussion.

byrneseyeview 18y ago

It doesn't always work. Watch: news.ycombinator doesn't even let you downvote warmed-over reddit stories.

thorax 18y ago
Well, that's the other side of the coin. Sometimes the troll will spur a change in the tools/app itself to support the scenario.
MaysonL 18y ago
Oh, yeah? I just saw one of those with 0 points! (How did that happen???).

ruslan 18y ago

In my IRC days saying word "linux" aloud on #unix will get you kicked instantly no matter what you say about the OS. And yes, asking for obvious will get you kicked as well ;-)

antiform 18y ago

When I first moved to the Bay Area, my roommate told me that the best way to find good places to eat and drink was to go onto a foodie forum like Chowhound and say something along the lines of "At [X], I had the best [Y] I've ever had!" because before you know it, you would have dozens of responses saying how wrong you were and among those responses, you'd find the best places to get [Y]. Is this trolling? Probably. But now I have an extensive list of great Bay Area eateries.

silentbicycle 18y ago

This is really unfortunate, on several levels. It's probably also self-reinforcing once it starts, because once a mailing list, IRC channel, etc. has a reputation of being populated by abrasive know-it-alls, new members have less of an incentive to bother being civil. Also, people mock-trolling to get useful answers is incredibly irritating to everyone else, which probably makes the overall attitude even less patient with newbie questions. I don't know of a better way around this, either, but it reminds me of an offhand comment somebody made recently about how once cultural forces take a certain amount of bribery and corruption for granted, doing things honestly at all becomes much more difficult.

ntoshev 18y ago

The RTFMan responses are one of the worst things in Linux culture. Man pages are an exhaustive reference about what you can do with commands, that's true. But they are not written in a helpful way: you pretty much have to read it all every time in order to see what you need. If Google had the same attitude with their search, they would be satisfied with a query for "george bush" that returns the page of some random George Bush out there, you would have to add "US president" to get what you need.

raphar 18y ago

It's a technique very used by some bosses (that dont know shxt). It's specially effective with young/big-ego !! developers. The modus operandi would be saying thay some work you did is crap. After that you provide a detailed report on the advantages of your work. And after that, he can tell his own boss what are the wonders he is acomplishing, all without reading a single line of the related documentation. !! replace young/big-ego with any of these: ninja, guru, hacker, elvis, etc. :D

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]