Who is a troll and why do they troll? Here’s a thread on another forum where people are trying to answer those questions.
The New York Times has a long article about trolls.
The really egregious trolls are philosophical nihilists. They do not target a certain genre of serious values: say religion, or love of art, or “the far right”, or “the far left”, or Objectivism. Instead, they are more eclectic: they target values as such. If someone seems serious about something, that’s enough for the worst trolls. The guys mentioned in the article who were making prank-calls to the family of a kid who comitted suicide – pretending to be the kid, etc. – are in this camp.
Trolls basically do what they do “for a laugh”. When they direct their exploits at a specific type of value system, that’s more understandable. For instance, a troll will join a Christian forum, and ask some newbie-type questions, and laugh when the people who are trying to answer benevolently. “Ha! ha!”, he thinks to himself, “these people are so stupid! Religion makes some people so dumb.”
This more specific type of troll has a handy rationalization: he hates religion (or a particular type of religious attitude, or socialist, or a certain type of Objectivist, or whatever). A third-party might not know if the troll has a reason or a rationalization. In many cases, only the troll himself knows whether he is genuinely having some harmless fun, or if it is actually psychologically important to him to have social interactions that leave him reinforced in his lonely opinion that: others are idiots, and that makes me smart.
In many cases, only the troll himself knows whether he is genuinely having some harmless fun, or if it is actually psychologically important to him to have social interactions that leave him reinforced in his lonely opinion that: others are idiots, and that makes me smart.
I wonder if it is ever harmless fun. In my mid-teens I had that same attitude: others were idiots, so that made me smart. I had some friends who thought the same, and I don’t remember being lonely. However, years later it did become lonely, and the attitude was hard to fix.
That still doesn’t address the motivation, and I am unsure what drives people, or drove me, to decide that people are generally awful as opposed to generally good (or even great). To be sure, it’s a sad state of mind.
In many cases, only the troll himself knows whether he is genuinely having some harmless fun, or if it is actually psychologically important to him to have social interactions that leave him reinforced in his lonely opinion that: others are idiots, and that makes me smart.
This is the jest of it. Like the Weev guy in the article. Most of that stuff doesn’t exist or is not a big deal, but he sees it as such because he has illusions of grandeur. They all do it for different reasons, but it usually boils down to building up this fictional world where they are the Tyler Durden or Neo. Like 4chan isn’t some big underground site. Anyone can go there and post. But articles like this, and the Fox News thing, and the Maxim thing… crack it up to be some super-hacker site.
And in turn there are people who are trying to make it there own little cult, or rebel group or whatever. That’s why there is such a huge fasinaction with Guy Fawkes masks.
I have so many thoughts and comments about all of this.
I think it’s great that moot finally came out. He has been trying to get people to stop treating 4chan like it’s their personal club house, but it’s difficult. /b/ is out of control, I haven’t been in a year, I can’t stand it. /rb9k/ is, as the article suggested, pretty decent. I actually started a thread about Megan Meier thwe week the news broke and we had a good discussion about it. Basically, a lot of people agreed with me that the mother in this case was super irresponsible. But, they weren’t any calls for death threats or anything…
I think that behavior gets lumped with 4chan in some package deal. Granted 4chan is 97% shitstorm for the most part, it’s the little underground group of hackers the media is potraying it as.
What a DUMB topic. You guys suck.
Man stop your crying weh weh weh. Bunch of wusses
This forum SUCKS SHEESH.
I own3d you!
:smartass: :smartass: