10 ms·
Internet troll study: Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, sadism
- TrainedMonkey 13y agoSo article basically claims that trolling is modern sadism. We knew that already, in every large enough society there will be people who enjoy discomfort of others. Real question is: does trolling on the internet help mitigate real life tendencies?
- eurleif 13y ago>Real question is: does trolling on the internet help mitigate real life tendencies? Are the effects of Internet trolling better than the effects of real life behavior?
- saraid216 13y agoWas not aware that the internet was not real. Life has been changed. I should probably disbelieve every story I've ever heard about people committing suicide due to online bullying, too.
- VeejayRampay 13y agoInternet trolls and trolls in general are absolutely not horrible people. They're in fact miserable individuals who choose to be reviled by everyone else in the world, cause at least it means being acknowledged (if negatively) rather than being ignored. Nothing but a coping mechanism.
- zvanness 13y agoI very much agree. In it's simplest form, I see it as a coping mechanism that helps them forget how pathetic they really are.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- Einstalbert 13y agoMy boyfriend is actually someone I met 10+ years ago online through a video game. At the time, I did not like him as he was considered a pretty nasty troll. Now that I know him intimately, I am not entirely convinced the teasing/bullying aspect of his personality isn't entirely just his own choice. He doesn't seem very miserable (go me!) but I can't help but think his behavior extends well past him trying to make up for something.
- mattgreenrocks 13y agoWe often unknowingly perpetuate our own brokenness as a poor way of dealing with it. It doesn't excuse it, but it's the default response.
- woah 13y agoDamn dude that's pretty depressing. Maybe her boyfriend was just PLAYING ONLINE GAMES?? I mean the point of most games is to virtually kill other players, playing some pranks seems pretty mild in comparison
- mattgreenrocks 13y agoThere's a spectrum for sure. Past a certain point, when you're constantly bullying one person repeatedly and stalking them, it becomes harassment, even if it's in-game. The real question is, are you generally trolling cause it's hilarious, or are you trying to bully individual people? It's tough to tell.
- Estragon 13y agoIf it's not too personal, I'm curious to know what you get out of the relationship.
- Einstalbert 13y agoWell we share a ton of interests, have an extremely long common history, his humor isn't too terribly far from my own (I laugh more than he does, but then he'll surprise me and enjoy some extremely low-brow stuff), and most of all we put up with each other's quirks/bullshit without too much hassle.
- balls187 13y agoOh no, we totally are horrible people.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- sirtroll 13y agointernet trolls usually are the only fun people in the internet, but in order to enjoy it you need to learn their game and that requires some wits.
- ecdavis 13y agoCan self-confessed trolls really be trusted to give honest answers on personality surveys?
- cristianpascu 13y ago"Such is the nature of evil, in time, all foul things come forth" :)
- balls187 13y agoSurvey science involves setting up controls to suss out people filing falsely.
- malandrew 13y agoYeah, but how many people conducting surveys are actually practicing this level of scientific rigor? Unless a study specifically points out what they did to ensure the validity of their results, I assumed none of these additional checks were performed.
- pistle 13y agoGetting effective sampling in case-control studies when it comes to the structure they seem to have put together is complex, with pitfalls. With the numbers they have and descriptions provided, we have little reason to believe this study was structured this way, let alone in a useful manner. Knocking down the paywall would help, but most pop-study coverage usually is great for research funding, but not often an indicator of great research. I did a case-control study showing this at some point and it got published to an open journal somewhere.
- lutusp 13y ago> Can self-confessed trolls really be trusted to give honest answers on personality surveys? If they're narcissists, then yes, because a narcissist is perfect, and each of his traits is a gift to humanity, so he wouldn't hesitate to describe how he sees himself, in gory detail. This obviously argues with the meaning of "honest answer", unless we accept that an honest answer is anything a person believes to be true. More depth on this topic: http://arachnoid.com/ChildrenOfNarcissus http://arachnoid.com/ChildrenOfNarcissus
- vezzy-fnord 13y agoThe study itself is paywalled. Slate's summary is woefully unconvincing, however. In fact, some of the described methods they used to identify trolls seemed very inadequate. Something a jolly prankster would latch onto for the sake of humor.
- gwern 13y agoGoogle Scholar to the rescue: http://scottbarrykaufman.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/trolls-just-want-to-have-fun.pdf http://scottbarrykaufman.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/trol...
- sliverstorm 13y agoit also found a relationship between all Dark Tetrad traits (except for narcissism) and the overall time that an individual spent, per day, commenting on the Internet. Well. That's not good news for ol' sliverstorm.
- trhway 13y agocorrelation doesn't mean causation. May be Dark Tetrad traits develop as result of the trolling. May be you still have time to stop and save your soul :)
- klipt 13y agoPretty sure online interaction is not a good substitute for real-world interaction, and the latter is necessary for developing social skills and a balanced viewpoint of human relationships. Chatting to people online is like having all your conversations through a crack in the wall. Except that even the tone of voice is filtered out.
- mattgreenrocks 13y agoI was about to say that seems quite like an ad hominem, until I read who posted that. More to the topic (online time vs personality traits), maybe it's why IRC feels like it's a haven for cynics?
- domdip 13y agoIt's not easy for me to put myself in the mind of an Internet troll, but I have to imagine I'd also be the kind of person who would enjoy trolling researchers by filling out their personality tests in the most shocking way possible. No idea if the study accounts for this possibility.
- diydsp 13y agoMany years ago in high school, we had to fill out some kind of "drug" survey. It was long and tedious and I was very square. The questionnaire had pages of naive questions that I patiently responded to..... ....but around the 13th of round of questions like "How many PCP-laced cigarettes do you smoke per week? A. One, B. Two, C. Three., D. Four, E. Five, F. Six to Ten G. Eleven to Twenty, H. Twenty-one or more," something switched inside of me and I started filling in the questions as if I were the most depraved abuser of every substance from the kitchen sink to highway overpass.
- joveian 13y agoIt is notable how little about the actual study this article actually reveals (the study itself is behind a paywall). I'd say the author of the article is just trolling...
- grkvlt 13y ago> paywall Google search for the title along with with 'filetype:pdf' is what is needed here... http://scottbarrykaufman.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/trolls-just-want-to-have-fun.pdf http://scottbarrykaufman.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/trol... Enjoy!
- volune 13y agoThe new four horseman.
- stefantalpalaru 13y agoThat's like doing psychological profiles on actors based on the roles they play.
- spoiler 13y agoI disagree. Actors openly (it's their calling or career, after all) play a role. It's also set in a controlled environment, and everyone knows that. "Trolls" (I use troll as a synonym for bully) are different in that aspect. They employ anonymity to attack someone. They chose their role as someone's tormentor, which is very real as opposed to two actors on set, who each know what their roles are. Actors play roles in (fictional and/or other) universes; trolls play roles in ours, which renders all their actions real, and they are aware of it. P.S: not sure if you were being funny by posting a controversial comment :P
- stefantalpalaru 13y ago>I use troll as a synonym for bully You shouldn't. "In Internet slang, a troll (/ˈtroʊl/, /ˈtrɒl/) is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people, by posting inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a forum, chat room, or blog), either accidentally or with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_%28Internet%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_%28Internet%29 "Bullying is the use of force, threat, or coercion to abuse, intimidate, or aggressively impose domination over others. The behavior is often repeated and habitual. One essential prerequisite is the perception, by the bully or by others, of an imbalance of social or physical power." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullying https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullying
- michaelochurch 13y agoTrolling, like hacking, has hat colors. I started out as a gray hat troll and became more white-hat over time. We have nothing in common with the black hat trolls and the bullies. Online bullies are (like all bullies) horrible people, but trolling is a different thing entirely. It can be done in a way that doesn't hurt people. The first rule of a decent troll: don't fuck with peoples' IRL.
- herokusaki 13y agoCan you define what you mean by a "white-", "gray-" and "black-hat" troll? The obvious parallel with security hacking doesn't seem to quite work for me if I think of "white-hat trolling" as a kind of human pentesting because humans who know they are being trolled are unlikely to get trolled by definition.
- gbog 13y agoWhite hat trolling has positive outcome, it helps people to consolidate their ethical immune system, like a vaccine.
- growupkids 13y agoIs this like a muffler return spring?
- saraid216 13y agoMy personal version of white-hat trolling involves stepping into threads and redirecting someone's attention onto me by provoking them. It (mostly) doesn't work on a forum like HN with heavy threading, but on a vBulletin-style forum, you can hijack the conversation away from going somewhere nasty or reveal snake oil of whatever brand. It's a vigilante kind of outlaw justice, and is especially useful when the mods are stuck in a gray area and can't act authoritatively. (Accusations of censorship or favoritism, for instance.) Done well, it helps prune back the negative elements of a community. It's insanely easy for such a thing to get out of control, though, which makes the "vigilante" analogy apt: same community, I was both thanked by the mods for steerage and given warnings for lashing out too much. (I was also offered a mod position, but turned it down.) It's like any other kind of trolling; the difference is wholly in your target choice. It is not the mark of a good person.
- gaius 13y agoThese days "troll" just means "someone on the Internet who disagrees with me and says so". The term has been so overused as to become meaningless.
- jakejake 13y agoThe word definitely has gotten re-appropriated a bit to where I hear people using it to describe a harmless prank or joke among friends.
- eplanit 13y agoExactly, as is "racist".
- girvo 13y agoSolid troll.
- herokusaki 13y agoI thought that was "hater".
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- PhasmaFelis 13y ago"Dark Tetrad", really? Are they trying to glamorize "being an asshole"?
- ACow_Adonis 13y agoAh, but did they test positive for the sordid quintuple of the major douchebag arcana?
- michaelochurch 13y agoOriginally it was "dark triad". It refers to 3 seemingly genetic personality traits (narcissism, psychopathy, and machiavellianism) that, although extremely undesirable, are in our genome because they provided a reproductive advantage, especially in men.
- theorique 13y agoIt's just a technical term in psychology, not meant to sound glamorous.
- patcheudor 13y agoI have a Dark Tetrad in my fish tank.
- badman_ting 13y agoThis is what people always say. And not to deny it completely, it's just that it's obviously kind of self-serving. If something pisses you off you can just write it off as trolling from a person who is messed-up in all the ways listed in the article. But moreover, any time spent thinking about the narcissism of others is time not spent thinking about one's own.
- wcummings 13y agoOnly Christ can judge us
- patcheudor 13y agoThe ultimate example of trolling. Well played! Well played!
- Tycho 13y agoThis is not how I use the word troll or trolling. What this article describes I would simply call 'bullying' or anonymous bullying or in extreme cases harassment. True trolling is about, among other things, plausible deniability. The troll identifies a pressure point in the collective unconscious of an online community, and then subtly attacks it. Depending on how skilled the troll is, what follows is a lot of attention and a large degree of over-reaction. The troll can then take the moral highground and pretend to be perplexed at these harsh responses, which of courses only provokes even more enraged responses. The cycle can be quite amusing. It can also generate/provoke lots of debate that a community would otherwise not be inclined to start. It's not about personal attacks.
- lukasm 13y agoAlso the amount of false positives what people would call bulling is pretty significant. From jokes wannabe, mistakes, cultural differences.
- touristtam 13y agosame goes for quite a few behaviour perceived as negative in our skewed view of political correctness: I've held the door to a female coworker and being told off by management for potential _sexual harassment_ ..... I've asked my friend how her female flatmate is doing these days and I am being called a _stalker_ .... This is going way too far. This Anglo-saxon view of what is correct and what is not, feels like a psychological defense mechanism for people that cannot or do not want to deal with those situation. Protection a less able person is something, but hiding behind such rules feels like plain cowardice.
- chadillac 13y ago"trolling is a art" Always summed it up perfectly for me when trying to describe it simply. It's a subtle sentence, it begs to be corrected, and it's sure to incite replies... once someone "takes the bait" it's just a matter of working whatever their weakest point is to incite maximum rage. It's basically a form of social engineering when you boil it down to the basics. "trolling is AN art" "yeah, that's what I just said stupid..." "well I'm not the idiot making simple grammatical erors." "erors... you sure about that? Listen I went to Harvard for English studies... I think I know when to use A vs AN, it's not like I don't have an degree or something..." ... and the cycle continues ... p.s. I might enjoy trolling more than the average bear.
- fideloper 13y agoEveryday trolling comes in the format of intelligent people using said intelligence to justify their positions, even if their position is weak or wrong. It's the result of being too mentally lazy to take the time to see another sides point of view but smart enough to justify their point in a way that's hard to argue against. It's a very republican mindset.
- fuckpig 13y agoSeems to be standard for the majority of the internet population, not just trolls. Further, as Tycho points out: > What this article describes I would simply call 'bullying' or anonymous bullying or in extreme cases harassment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7242130 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7242130 Trolling is about provoking your enemy into revealing himself. It's not just walking up to someone and saying something rude or stupid. But that's about the most the majority of people can handle.
- jon_black 13y agoI wonder if these people are indeed being themselves or playing the role of a troll. Or to put it another way, would they behave the same way "in the real world"?
- ChristianMarks 13y agoSince it hasn't been mentioned, here is Torkel Franzen's Internet Trolling Guide (I prefer to call it this; the actual title is How to make a nuisance of yourself in news): http://web.archive.org/web/20070609085706/http://www.sm.luth.se/~torkel/eget/net.html http://web.archive.org/web/20070609085706/http://www.sm.luth...
- cwaniak 13y agoI always knew that only psychopaths aren't Marxists.
- julie1 13y agotrolling can describe also people like zedshaw or theo de raat even linus torvalds. People that have strong opinions often a tinge of humour, and sometimes are right against everybody. I think being confident in your claim even if it goes against the majority can be called narcisism I guess making a point without using the manipulation of feelings based on logic can be called psychopathy (vs empathy/fallacies) I guess also that they speak because they care when they feel a wrong idea is spreading ... I guess we can hardly make a distinction between a troll and someone that is disruptive (innovative) We should tolerate trolls and love them because in the minority of this population maybe master troll bringing up new ideas. The fact I am a troll does not mean I am a genius, nor that I have any interest lobbying for the usefullness of trolls :) But I think the non troll way of discussing is creating trolls: using fallacies, not accepting strong logical criticizes that can enforce an idea, the ad hominem based on authority rather than the construction of arguments, the lack of passion and sometimes humor that comes with. So my point is trolling is beneficial to every communities, and it should stay fun.