As I understand it, the concern about trolling is that it’s indifferent to exactly who gets riled by it, as long as someone does.
An insult directed against a specific person… nah. I suppose if he’d thrown in “you’re an asshole just like all Christians [or whatever your religious affiliation is, if any]”, that extra part could be considered trolling since it is reasonable to assume other Christians (or whatever) would take offense.
Fact is, individually, you’re not important enough a target to claim that something designed to irritate you constitutes an effort to irritate others. Nobody is.
Besides, why is it important that “trolling” have some strict black-white on-off true-false rigid definition? You or anyone could be banned from this privately-run message board without warning or reason or explanation. What authority, if any, were you planning to appeal to should your membership get cancelled?
As a side note, I recall a time when I stood virtually alone with an unpopular position. Didn’t even get warned, as I recall. It probably helped that at no time did I ever say or imply that being alone on the issue made me feel special, nor that the opposition I encountered in and of itself proved the my position was superior, nor that the people expressing opposition were doing so insincerely.
Trolling is like trying to start a barfight so that you can then stand back and watch as everyone hurts each other while you get to laugh about how you caused it all.
If you’re pissed off at someone, throw a punch at them, and end up in the middle of a fight, that’s not trolling because you’re not doing it for kicks. It’s still not acceptable behavior of course.
Yeah I agree with Sage Rat. The point of trolling is that it generates big, explosive arguments. It’s playing the devil’s advocate but taken to an extreme, it’s not just insulting people but it’s taking an extreme position and spreading it around in places where you know it will create a situation. The difference between having an extreme or unpopular position and trolling is whether or not you deliberately use your position to create messy on-board brawls. Which are different from reasoned debate, even passionate debate, because the trolling poster is not really interested in debating, just in getting other people riled up, then sitting back and eating popcorn.
n.b. it is possible to troll even if you don’t like eating popcorn
Edited to add, trolling doesn’t require that you don’t really have that position or that you’re creating a false personality. That would be a sock. Socks can be used to troll but sock ≠ troll by default.
Ahhh! You have just pointed out to me the OTHER thread where I did, in fact, Warn you for trolling. I had forgotten about that one.
I do apologize for claiming that you had not been Warned.
True although my op was so completely far out and outrageous that you would need to be really trying to take it as anything other than an obvious joke (or thought experiment).
The obviousness proves I wasn’t trying to rile anybody. Genuine troll posts aren’t so insane. For the record, I never try to rile people. Don’t see the point - I just say what I think.
I share some concern about the question of what is trolling and what isn’t.
In most forums, trolling is easy to identify (especially after-the-fact) with little disagreement. Often it involves jerking people around with later revealed untruths (e.g. pretending to be a troubled teen looking for spiritual help on a Christian site) or posting something that goes against the nature of the site or post (e.g. posting that banjos are for toothless hillbillies on a bluegrass forum).
This also applies to SDMB formus like MPSIMS.
However, when we get into forums where people are no longer looking for a supportive and sympathetic response group, but rather are LOOKING for antagonistic responses, such as in GD and the Pit, what is trolling seems less clear. The jerking around with untruths most would still agree is trolling – but goat-getting? People expect and want their goat to be got in those forums. Posts designed to get a rise out of people? If a post doesn’t get a rise out of people it won’t get any responses, either.
I think there is a different standard for evaluating trolliness (thanks Colbert!) in GD and the Pit than there is in the rest of the board – as there should be and as there has to be. But I’m not sure what that standard is.
Adding to this uncertainty are that there are a couple things that to me seem clearly like trolling (Der Trihs’ “Republicans are eeeeevvvvviiiiillll” routine and Dio’s “There is no X, and there never has been” multipage smashups) that don’t get called such by moderation (AFAIK). This makes it look (from my biased perspective) that either there is selective enforcement or none at all.
It’s a hard thing to define. I’ve been trying to come up with a bright-line definition, but every time I do I can think of counterexamples. The best I can say is that trolling is posting disingenuously or in bad faith, but that comes no closer to being a really solid definition.
But it is possible to troll in the Pit, and “you know it when you see it” seems valid enough. Just because it’s not easy to define doesn’t mean it isn’t obvious when it happens. Unproductive, disingenuous, purposeless antagonism is just as unwelcome in the Pit as in any forum.
Thanks for pointing that out. I would think there would be different standards depending on the different expectations of the forums.
If it gets a response, why is it unproductive? And why are only some people antagonized while others may be intrigued or challenged or even entertained? Some people are easily antagonized, it seems. Should it be the responsibility of the person posting a provocative comment that the person they’re posting to isn’t able to respond, except with antagonism?
See? Difficult to define. And there will always be people who claim something isn’t trolling.
What do I mean by unproductive? Take this mock thread title:
Michael Moore is a lying asshole!
Two possible OPs:
A) Michael Moore is a lying asshole and you liberals are stupid sheep for believing everything he says! BAAA! BAAA! Where’s your Mooreobamahusseincare now?!
B) Michael Moore has definitely stepped over the line in his latest picture. Here is a link to a segment of the movie in which he makes it seem as though Senator Insertnamehere wants to remove all black people from his state. Here is a written testimony by Senator Insertnamehere of all the footage Moore cut. Can anyone defend this?
B may or may not be trolling, but it is presenting a productive, if controversial and potentially inflammatory topic. A is nothing but trolling, because there’s nowhere for it to go and it’s just “goat-getting,” as it were.
Obviously it’s not a binary thing. There’s a lot of grey area where you have to take into account additional factors, and even then it can be ambiguous. But it’s totally possible to troll even in the Pit, though I would agree that there should be some leeway there where there wouldn’t be in other fora.
That seems like a lot of pit posts - if trolling, it doesn’t get flagged as such.
If in GD, it MIGHT be trolling, but If this had been a real post, I think it would be jumped on for being insulting and for not having a real point to be debated. Trolliness seems secondary.
The closest things I see to trolling would be Der Trihs’ evil shows and Dio’s pileup assertions. But I’d be reluctant to call those trolling because…it just doesn’t feel like real trolling.
I think it would be helpful to see posts from GD and the pit that people (especially moderators) felt were trolling. I think that would be better to help set the boundaries than trying to define.
I don’t view GD as being a place where one looks for or expects antagonistic responses. In fact, I’d expect it to be the last place (after GQ) for it. Same with goat-getting.
