Why do people engage in long exchanges with trolls?

In My Humble Opinion
41

I don’t talk the serious but inconsequential issues like politics, religion, or other social debates with really anyone IRL.

There are a few in my life that would like to troll me into arguing with them, but it is not to be done as an equitable exchange of idea, but rather an attempt at bullying someone who thinks differently than the majority. So, I do not discuss controversial things with many acquaintances, it wouldn’t accomplish anything at all.

I have some friends with whom I can discuss such matters, but we are less in disagreement. A discussion about healthcare there would be disagreements about the best methods of ensuring that everyone gets covered, but not debating whether or not that should be the goal.

So, coming here allows one to debate in a lower stakes environment. I have no family to disown, friends to lose, or clients to alienate.

In that context, yes, arguing is fine, even if it is futile (and if you think that debating on here with non-trolls is any less futile than arguing with trolls…), if you enjoy it.

And well, even with trolls, there is often something to be gained in enjoyment from at least the first couple of rounds with them.

Though, yes, they do get tedious after a time, and are less worthwhile to engage, but to some extent it ends up being a matter of trolling the troller. You get the same whatever it is that the troll gets out of trolling, but without the guilt or disruption of trolling someone who actually has useful things to say.

42

Initially I was naive enough to believe people could generally change their minds as a result of a debate on the Internet. It took me some time to realize a debate on the Internet usually boils down to a sort of quarrel, where having the last say is more important than anything else.

Few people are broad-minded enough to change their views and the Internet does not seem to be the right medium for that kind of process anyway. I wonder if the current tribalization is a temporary or permanent state of the Internet social interaction.

43

This part reveals something.

I think it is human nature to feel “I’m right, and all I need to do is post the cogent crisp argument and the other will see and relinquish their long held beliefs”

But rarely does a “Gotcha” moment actually work–because the other side is thinking the same thing.

44

The best advice I ever heard on this was from the unlikeliest source, Adam Corolla, who said something to the effect of “If it isn’t making you money, and it isn’t making you happy, then why are you doing it?”

45

[ol][li]One can win an argument even if the other person won’t admit it.[/li][li]One-liners are funny even if the other person doesn’t admit it.[/ol][/li]

Taken from the preface of his book, in which Mr. De Ford proves that the earth is flat.

Regards,
Shodan

46

I don’t know if my brother is an online troll because I cut off contact a decade ago, but he is definitely a real life troll. He seeks out strangers and besieges them with crazy conspiracy theories that he himself does not believe. You cannot win an argument with him because his only goal is to manipulate you and watch you dance. He doesn’t have to respond to logic or reason because those are not part of his game.

My parents raised him to believe he was a very special genius. If teachers and employers didn’t agree, they were wrong. As a result, brother did not do well in real life. He buries his feelings of failure by treating other people with contempt and engaging in sick games that only he can “win”.

I mention all this for the benefit of anyone who thinks that arguing with a troll can actually affect the troll’s opinions.

47

I read an article from a medical journal defining the troll concept in more psychologically reasonable terms. What I remember from it pretty much followed the pattern ioioio describes. Probably falls neatly into several different personality disorder categories, depending on the particular subject.

48

If a person was going to relinquish their long held beliefs just because somebody said the right magic words, those beliefs wouldn’t have been held this long. In actual fact there are several cognitive biases that basically mean that the longer a belief has been held, the more difficult it is to dislodge it, generally speaking. And universally speaking, if somebody is on the internet they’ve already seen all the words, just, all the words. (Yes, even that one.) So the idea that you’re going to both catch them at a malleable moment, and that you’ll say the one thing they haven’t heard before, well, those are lottery-level odds you’re looking at there.

The other side might think they can pull a gotcha on you with a new tidbit of argument or information (heck, in my interactions with theists, that’s their entire shtick), but that’s not the reason their intractable beliefs are intractable. The beliefs have staying power on their own.

49

If your brother is not here, then several of his clones most certainly are.

Or maybe he currently occupies the White House?

50

It’s a symmetric problem: atheists want to show theists the way of reason, and theists want to show atheists the way of reason. There’s a reason why religion is not a topic to be discussed over the dinner table.

51

I’ve yet to hear a theist use reason to buttress their arguments. The idea of them doing so is so bizarre to me that I’m tempted to assume that was a typo or a copy/paste problem.

And I was thinking more along the lines of witnessing. “Have you heard the Good Word?” Even putting aside the bizarre approach where it’s assumed that Jesus is news to anyone, anecdotes and personal experiences are often proposed with the expectation that they’ll be the straw that tips the scales and changes hearts and minds.

Which is not to say that atheists are innocent of bringing in external facts to buttress their cases, though they do tend to stick more closely to citeable sources than the average theist does in part due to the fact their position is the one grounded in observable reality.

52

Update on labeling one’s critics “trolls”:

An organic food company (Stonyfield Farm) is taking some heat for running a deceptive ad featuring young girls declaiming about purported GMO dangers. The company response includes claiming that many of the negative comments posted online are from “trolls”, citing an unnamed database of “fake names”. Shades of Donald Trump.

In related news, it seems there is a list of pro-vaccine “trolls” being circulated by antivaxers (and reportedly used to deny access to pseudoscience websites). It turns out that I (or someone with my uncommon but not terribly unusual name) have made the list, despite rarely posting any pro-vaccine comments under that name.

I feel like the Steve Martin character who rejoiced over seeing his name in the phone book - I’m somebody!!!

53

FWIW, I have changed my mind on some topics over the years, sometimes based on debates I’ve viewed here.

However, I find that I rarely change position at the time of argument (well, maybe more often, now that I’m older and have been so often wrong), but much later as the ideas percolate in my noggin, I may come around.

I guess that I’m saying that it’s possible to be persuasive without actually seeing the needle move.

54

It’s pretty straightforward: imagine it’s a topic you care about. You are a proud Restovian, and there’s some guy trying to say Restovia is a shithole or whatever.
It would pain you to see the last word be: “So anyway, Restovia sucks”. Thousands of people might see that discussion and think you ultimately relented and your silence means you agree now. You have to put it right. Again.

For me, I get caught up in the threads where there’s some common misconception.
For example, say there’s a thread on evolution and someone is going with the argument that “How can you say it happened, you weren’t there!”. I’ll try very hard to explain to them why that point is invalid, and I’ll do so repeatedly because when it is foundational to someone’s belief system, I understand it might take a while for the penny to drop.
But eventually there may come a point where I realize the other person does not actually want to learn anything, and they are happy to ignore what you’re saying and just repeat themselves.
Thankfully, I tend to realize that I’m wasting my time much more quickly than I did in the past.

55

I was going to say something to this effect, as I have both family and friends who love poking holes and challenge of challenging. I’ve been told it’s more intellectual exercise than mean-spiritedness. Contrast that to actual trolling which is all about the latter for the sheer anonymous hell of it.

56

What I don’t get is engaging on this board with the same trolls over and over on the same topics, even after much of the “dialogue” has deteriorated into name-calling. And then doing the same thing the next day. And the next. That’s not intellectual sport… and I do love authentic intellectual sport.