Why do you people feed the trolls?

The BBQ Pit
101

I’ve always found it interesting that trolls seldom will troll each other. It’s odd how often they bypass each other, never seeming to notice each others’ glaring errors and flaws. Some people look at trolls and say something like “Oh they’re not so bad, it’s just a personality thing, that’s not really trollish behavior.” They just don’t get what everybody is complaining about. They can’t see the problem. Or sometimes they do notice, but just make excuses for each other, or legitimize each other. Or sometimes they even post in support of each other, almost like tag-team wrestling. Even when troll A is so blatantly wrong, troll B will step up to agree with the troll A. But if a well-meaning sincere person is just a wee bit wrong, multiple trolls pile on picking apart every little tiny nit, mischaracterizing and dismissing that person’s entire group of posts and POV, all because of a tiny error. Heck, they might even try to dismiss a person from the thread for not crossing every single “t” or dotting every “i.” (Yes, it’s been known to happen.)

Trolls will also disagree with the most basic and obvious truth, saying the EXACT opposite of what is most true. It seems they like hearing all the imaginary jaws drop open. They like knowing that countless folks all over the world are sitting at their PC screens gasping aloud. But while we are gasping, the troll is laughing, and getting a buzz. (Some of them call it “lulz.”) Yes, the bottom-line goal for the troll is to wind you up, to watch you crash and burn, to watch you fall from grace and descend into the muck with them. They enjoy your emotional pain, and the drama it creates. They like knowing that you hurt, and they like knowing that they caused it. I happen to be well-acquainted with a few trolls IRL. They poke and prick people just for the fun of it, and then feel happy and satisfied when that someone cries in agony.

I say it doesn’t matter how long a person has been a member of any board. That proves nothing except they know how to push right up to the threshold without going over. And besides, some admins think a few trolls keeps things lively and interesting. Just look at how long the threads are where the trolls participate. Lots and lots of people posting, and also lurking. Lots of mouse-clicking to catch up on the latest fiery episode. A certain amount of trolling, in just the right balance, creates drama, and increases traffic to the site. It’s similar to how drivers will slow down to gawk at a car wreck, and the bottleneck of traffic ensues… a captive audience. What if someone found a way to make a dollar from that. They could count the mouse-clicks and tell the advertisers how many people are stopping by who are likely to see their advertised product.

So there’s no need to complain about people feeding trolls, and no need to feel bad that you fed a troll; because you really just helped create a little more traffic for the board. It’s all good.

Abby:… “last century”…
haha, that’s really funny, and clever… and overly dramatic…
sorta like saying that last week was last year. :rolleyes:

102

Maybe it’s just my weird sense of humor, but I find that last part really funny. Like if several people are saying 2 + 2 = 4, and the other person says, well, yeah, it’s raining outside and the answer is 5, you moron!
That just cracks me up! And the more outrageous the claim, the funnier it is.

I disagree with the OP about this. I think we should feed these people more, all at once. It’s really hard to keep up with having to respond to so many people simultaneously. Most people either give it up or stop responding. Either way, that seems to be the desired result you seem to want to see. The only part I get concerned about is when I think other people don’t realize what’s happening and they get hurt. That’s a bummer.

103

And I’m still craving Buckeyes. Must make them this weekend…
I think trolls are different from trolling. All trolls er, troll, but not all who troll are trolls. Trolling can be very close to fishing. Is it fishing or trolling to enter a thread and skew the attention to you with a picture or a personal anecdote? Probably not, if pic and story are germane to the convo at hand. But they could be seen as such, if said poster does so over time.

I have no clue who said poster is, btw, just using an example.

104

Nah, just bored at times. And amazed that Faithfool is still whining about me. Next will come the accusation of cyberstalking…

Troll - word used on the internet for someone who doesn’t agree with you.

105

Nope. Are you really so immature and insecure that you can’t handle someone having spoken your name somewhere? Or like here, when it hasn’t even been invoked?? That’s a whole new level of self-involved that I’ve never encountered before.

But you go ahead and work it though. You seem to do that really well.

ETA: I see that my decision not to mention you by name couldn’t possibly have precluded your ability to ferret out a desire for attention anyway. Glad to know I was spot on in my interpretation. Now feed on if you must, but just like last time, I can walk away and you can rattle on by yourself.

106

I have to say, I do like the perennial troll-defense of "you’re just saying he is/she is/I am a troll because you disagree! "

Part of why it’s so awesome is because, much of the time, that pity little phrase is, in and of itself, trolling. People will spend pages and pages in a thread tearing their hair out, pointing out cites, facts, figures, logic, methodology, epistemology, and a troll will come in and just start making shit up in order to fuck with people. When people point out that the troll has ignored all the cites, facts, figures, logic, methodology, epistemology and has simply been making shit up to annoy people, while you were having a perfectly reasonable discussion with all the other people in the thread who disagreed but who didn’t adopt troll-tactics, the troll responds “Ah-hah! You just can’t deal with people who disagree with you.”

107

No, but apparently you are so immature and insecure that you have to whine about me in I have no idea how many places, simply because I didn’t agree with you. I have time to read maybe 10 threads (actually skim) and already I find you in two pissing and moaning about how awful I was to you.

Hopefully when you walk off to some other thread to whine, it won’t be one that looks interesting to me.

108

Threads like that are not even close to the only time that you all invoke the troll word in here. Look at “people you hate” thread (or whatever it’s called), as well as the fact that I am not the only person that has been described but not named in this thread. The lack of maturity in here at times is staggering considering the name of the board.

And of course that doesn’t address the idea of calling things you don’t know about and/or haven’t experienced “made up”.

109

It was a pile on. They want to get a reaction. You’re new, and not politically correct. So…

By reacting,you are actually feeding the trolls. Which is fine if you get some kind of amusement out of the process, which is why I sometimes do it, but I wouldn’t expect people to change their behavior towards you if you reinforce it. They are hoping to bait you into doing something that will get you banned.

But yes, you’re correct - to a degree, “troll” means “someone who disagrees with you”. And this board has a very solid groupthink on the subject of race.

Regards,
Shodan

110

Yah, but it was a well deserved one. And it’s not about political correctness. When a new poster leads off by saying that they have an internal negative reaction to an entire racial group, and then makes clear that they’re not here to discuss or even argue, but yank chains…

To wit, for how many days did this troll maintain that by using the nomenclature “African American”, people evinced a “slave mentality”? I mean, you’re talking about a poster who came to the board claiming to be ignorant of of the fact that the majority of blacks in the nation are descended from slaves, and yet began making claims about how blacks in the country have a ‘slave mentality’ because they’re stuck in the past where their ancestors were slaves. And all the while blaming her ‘ignorance’ on the fact that three decades ago (according to her), her high school wasn’t too hot.

You can also notice, for instance, the number of topics on which she’s quickly adopted the deliberately inflammatory rhetoric, and about which it was clear she was totally ignorant. For instance, her raving about the state of education today while it was painfully obvious that she didn’t have even a basic knowledge of what the curriculum actually consisted of. But she made it clear that a lack of knowledge wasn’t going to get in the way of starting an argument. And after her juvenile whining, deliberate provocations, willful ignorance and sheer stupidity for her to talk about “immaturity” takes the cake.

You are right that many posters here simply shout down dissent, but the person you’re defending really is a racist troll. Or, hell, maybe she just plays one on this board.

111

Shodan-

Clearly “troll” does not mean “someone who disagrees with you.”

It includes posting with the intent of provoking a certain response not for the purpose of expressing a particular POV but for the sake of the entertainment of the reaction to the pushing of the buttons and implies that the poster does not really hold the belief. Obviously in some cases it is just that someone has such a different POV that it is hard to believe they can hold the belief in truth yet they do. Those people are usually not so bad so long as the disagreements are not expressed with arrogance. Sometimes someone really is just really dumb and thickheaded and frustrating to deal with. Obviously none of us know who these people really are other than that sliver of them we see here. We can only deduce intent.

Sometimes it at least seems clear that someone is using deliberately inflammatory rhetoric and trying hard to push buttons. That much is often easier to deduce with some confidence than whether or not someone actually holds the beliefs expressed. Sometimes those posters keep pushing the buttons and clearly appear to be looking for more buttons to push, relishing the attention they receive in return. Maybe this is the only power they have in life, I don’t know and don’t care. What I do know is that I find it annoying that such behaviors can totally derail other discussions and I think that the fault for that derailment lies in both the button pusher and those who allow their buttons to be pushed.

Attention whores and trolls use supernormal stimuli as bait. And true to our animal nature other posters respond with predictable fixed action patterns.

The question of this thread is not if any particular poster is a troll or an attention whore, but rather whether or not we try to control our fixed action patterns once we have, to our own satisfaction at least, determined that the posts are indeed that sort of bait. Or if we behave like some fish that see the damn hook attached to the lure, but just can’t stop ourselves … it’s so shiny and colorful!

112

On this board, it often does. I’ve been called a troll any number of times, mostly for my opinions.

Same here. curlcoat has unpopular opinions, and is new. Posters thus take the opportunity to pile on and demonstrate their solidarity with the “correct” side.

:shrugs:

Regards,
Shodan

113

And see, although I strongly disagree with your opinions, I’ve never thought you were a troll. Also, I’ve never (to my knowledge) participated in a pile-on in my life, nor used the term “troll” except once, so I can at least honestly attest that my issue here isn’t what you’ve described above or the fact that anyone is new. However, after having stated more than once why I feel the way I do in this case, I now realize that my emotions are getting the best of me and that I need to step away from the issue or else behave in a way I see as disreputable.

So, I’m going to take a hiatus from all of the Dope except the one long-running game room thread I’m in and then hopefully when I return, I’ll be able to take the advice of others and not let my own personal perceptions continue to influence my outlook here and to simply not be bothered by such things.

Peace.

114

If you want to claim that “often” people on this board make the accusation incorrectly fine, but you are smart enough to know that being inaccurate with an accusation does not mean that word changes its meaning.

My question however remains: “whether or not we try to control our fixed action patterns once we have, to our own satisfaction at least, determined that the posts are indeed that sort of bait. Or if we behave like some fish that see the damn hook attached to the lure, but just can’t stop ourselves … it’s so shiny and colorful!”

I readily concede that one poster’s (included yours and mine) determination of another poster’s motivations may indeed be off-base. Heck the entire MB may be wrong and the alleged attention whore the only sane intelligent one around in reality. But this is for when you as a poster are throughly convinced that it is not so. The alleged attention whore’s behavior is not the issue of this thread. How we respond when we are convinced that that is what they are is.

So anyone who sees themselves in the descriptions given is free to see themselves if they want. But this thread is not about you, and/or whether you are an attention whore, a troll, an idiot, a misunderstood genius, or just of a different POV. It is about how we respond to to those who we in our heart of hearts is trying intentionally to push buttons and to sidetrack a thread into being all about them. Keep any defense of your behavior and about how our conclusions are mistaken in threads that are built for that purpose.

115

In the link you provided, the supernormal stimuli is more like a force of nature. It’s the person/thing that gets reactive to the stimuli that is in question, not the stimulus itself.

So are you asking to have a discussion about why people do things repeatedly when they’re not working? Your comments remind me of Pema Chodron’s teachings on shenpa. Continuing to argue with someone when it’s clear that it’s not working is a type of shenpa for some people. You can read more about that here:

Are you asking why this happens or what people can do about it? Or both? Or neither?

116

Why? Because it’s FUN, dammit! (Well, not always…but sometimes, it’s a blast!)

117

Gosh, that’s mature! :rolleyes: Eh, sometimes I like to feed the trolls and other times it’s too boring and/or I don’t have the time. I’m not interested in changing anyones behavior, but I did sort of expect more intelligence and maturity from a board that claims to be fighting ignorance! :dubious:

Kinda sad, especially since they accuse me of not being able to learn…

118

Except, I wasn’t a new poster, just one that doesn’t bother you all that often.

Probably a lot less than you would prefer to believe.

I think I’ve had more than one post in two whole topics, other than the pit thread about me. As for “deliberately inflammatory rhetoric” and “totally ignorant”, simply because you believe something doesn’t make it true. You are aware that there are valid opinions and beliefs out there that don’t agree with your own, right?

OK, then, explain to me how it is that you have even a basic knowledge of the curriculum in the schools in my city? I did find it really amazing the number of people that told me that I was completely wrong in my opinions on my public schools who had zero idea where I live. And amusing.

Besides, I clearly stated that I was basing my opinion on the product that our schools were kicking out into the workforce. Knowing what the curriculum is would be rather immaterial if the schools aren’t getting it taught, eh?

You are certainly doing a good job at playing an idiot - you are playing, right? If you aren’t, start by going and looking up racist.

119

Not quite sure how you got that from the link or maybe I do not understand what you mean.

Supernormal stimuli are artificial stimuli that are even more powerful at eliciting fixed action behaviors than the natural stimuli are. The analogy to board behaviors is the poster who posts in ways that are more likely to elicit reactions than that which a normal real poster would produce with the intent of producing a particular result - the diversion of a thread from whatever the subject was into making it mostly all about her or him. The analogy to the fixed action pattern are the posters who almost instinctively respond in various and predictable ways.

A poster devoted to making as many conversations focus around themselves as possible may create a situation where as many as a third of recent posts in a thread are their posts as they throw more bait out, and the op gets diverted by both those posts and those giving said poster exactly what (s)he wants - attention, any attention at all.

Now I am not sure if that behavior is trolling or attention whoring or what it should be called. But it is destructive to the process of having conversations that actually address a particular op. More so than most of what gets called trolling.

Of course any individual can ignore them, but unless everyone ignores them they succeed in destroying other discussions. Like a bratty kid who comes into his or her parents’ dinner party and “shows off” - and whose parents decide not to discipline effectively by removing them from the party - all the brat needs is a few adult guests to respond by noticing them and they will keep it going and the party is no longer much fun.

Is it trolling? Is it being a jerk? I don’t know what you call it but I think that such behavior is destructive and the brats who do it need to be given a time-out. But that choice is up to the mods, not me. Meanwhile those who directly encourage the behavior by feeding into the attention seeking behavior share some of the blame for the train wrecks of multiple discussions, although they are free to complete their fixed action patterns if they wish.

120

For your definition of the term, you used a passage from the dictionary of zoology. The example was about a bird and an egg was the stimulus. The stimulus is a force of nature. That takes your definition a bit away from this context since you’re claiming that these stimuli are intentional and can be stopped.

I think you’re talking here about people who frustrate people with their responses.

But how about people who literally do the “look at me” routine. Their responses are so overly-dramatic that people will stop the conversation to ask about what’s going on with them. Are you talking about these people also? There are a number of very popular posters that have either done this or do this frequently. Would you consider this trolling as well?

So what’s the solution? Your call for people to stop feeding the trolls seems to have been ineffective since some people are enjoying their fixed action pattern. How would the mods stop this? Should they?