Findings on Trolling?

December 12, 2011 9:46 AM

A friend recently owned up to being an internet troll. He claims not to understand what he gets out of it. His techniques are baiting, manipulating, feigning innocence, and never getting mad. What makes trolls tick and is it curable?

If it is possible to make generalizations about this, I'd be interested in that information. (Respectfully, I don't plan to offer details on this person's history and lifestyle because I don't see the benefit in having people do a remote psychoanalysis of him as an individual. And no, the friend is not me.)

posted by Jagz-Mario to Human Relations (31 answers total)

They get the balls they don't have in real life.
posted by xammerboy at 9:54 AM on December 12, 2011 [3 favorites]

They get attention. That can be kind of a big draw to people, as well as the power associated with being able to demand, expect and control a reaction.
posted by Brockles at 9:57 AM on December 12, 2011

Is he just a cranky commenter? I can't get too worked up over people who aren't part of the Gawker or HuffPo echo chamber, or even at the NYT. Making mean comments on personal blogs seems wrong, but mixing it up at commercial sites--is that so evil?
posted by Ideefixe at 9:59 AM on December 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

It's a rush. I'd guess they don't have too much excitement in their offline life. That's probably the cure.
posted by auto-correct at 9:59 AM on December 12, 2011 [2 favorites]

> He claims not to understand what he gets out of it

Sounds like he's trolling you (aka feigning ignorance) in real life, too.
posted by dgeiser13 at 10:01 AM on December 12, 2011 [18 favorites]

Penny Arcade summed this up pretty succinctly.

Consider a traceable identity something akin to the superego. The knowledge that you can get caught doing Bad Things by people (as opposed to God or whatever) who have the ability to socially "punish" you is a large part of the established conscience in some people. Take away that fear of punishment, and the conscience goes away with it.
posted by griphus at 10:01 AM on December 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: (Ideefixe: it's not about whether it's evil or not... it makes him and others unhappy... he admits its more perverse than cranky commentary)
posted by Jagz-Mario at 10:02 AM on December 12, 2011

Best answer: Er, hit "post" too fast.

Anyway, the other part of the equation is that riling people is fun for some. If you've ever seen or read Trainspotting, there's a scene where two of the characters have a long-range BB gun and are just idly shooting at random people/dogs/etc. in the park and watching it through binoculars and cracking up.

Some people troll anyone. Some people troll members of communities they are part of in disguise. Some people troll assholes who they see as somehow deserving it. So, cheap thrills, justice, playing one's own court jester, it all depends on who he is trolling and why.
posted by griphus at 10:04 AM on December 12, 2011 [4 favorites]

it makes him and others unhappy

Him trolling makes him unhappy?
posted by Green With You at 10:07 AM on December 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: it makes him and others unhappy

Him trolling makes him unhappy?

Yes.

Great answers so far. Thanks. I have some blindspots on this issue because I care about the person.
posted by Jagz-Mario at 10:09 AM on December 12, 2011

I'd agree with griphus, with the added caveat that an anonymous identity online allows people to express opinions that they actually hold in real life, but for which they would be pilloried if they expressed them in meat space.

Could it be that this is what makes him unhappy, that he expresses an opinion others find objectionable and others jump on him for it?
posted by LN at 10:11 AM on December 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

If it makes him unhappy, is he trolling compulsively? Or is he trolling because he doesn't have the social skills to interact decently with other people?

There are a number of reasons this might be the case. As you wisely surmised, a professional would be the appropriate person to make a diagnosis.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:12 AM on December 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Just a hypothesis: remaining calm in an internet debate while goading others into getting angry may evoke feelings of superiority.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 10:12 AM on December 12, 2011 [6 favorites]

I'd guess a lot of it has to do with control. By remaining calm while make other people jump (and snarl and fume), the troll has control over himself AND all of these other people. Whereas usually most of us feel out of control of ourselves, let alone the rest of the scary world.

Control is pretty heady and powerful, even if you don't feel powerless in your own day-to-day interactions.
posted by ldthomps at 10:18 AM on December 12, 2011 [3 favorites]

Anyway, the other part of the equation is that riling people is fun for some.

I have a good friend who used to do stand-up comedy. I remember him telling me the greatest pleasure he got from it was when he "got a rise" out of people. But he wasn't scattershot about it. He chose various villains to go after: bullies, racists, snobs etc. But nevertheless, he felt far better when he got people angry, as opposed to just making them laugh. Which, as I think about it, reflects very much on his own issues back then. As a young man (early 20s) he was very angry at the world (all its inequities and injustices) and tended to lack respect for anyone who didn't share this anger.

In the end though, he soured on it. I never really asked him why but I'm guessing it was part of the maturing process. That is, the older he got (the more real life experience he had) the more he realized that he was hardly a saint, or a genius. In acknowledging his own inner asshole/idiot, he was humbled and thus grew a little more charitable toward everyone else.

Not that he isn't still a funny guy. He's just a little more benevolent about it now.
posted by philip-random at 10:20 AM on December 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

I sometimes thing that there are people who use the classic "trolling" tactics because they really don't know how to win a debate without them (and they are, for whatever reason, really invested in "winning.") It's an effective way to grind people down and leave yourself the last one standing, but since no one will ever say "Hey, that's a good point, you may be right" I'd imagine it feels pretty hollow.

It's definitely possible to find people who seem to do well in debates, or communities that handle them well, and study them, but it may be faster and more effective to get at the root of the problem, which is that desire to "win." No one ever really wins an internet debate, so redefining a successful outcome from "Hah I got the last word" to "Hey these people are pretty cool and seem to like talking to me" may be the way to go.
posted by restless_nomad at 10:20 AM on December 12, 2011 [2 favorites]

I dabbled in this sort of thing, as a 14-year-old asshole. It can make you feel powerful and in control- you are making people do things, forcing them to react in a certain way. It's a 'dance, my puppets, dance' kind of thing.

I now hate that I ever did it, of course- but I think part of the reason I did it was that I felt I had no control over other aspects of my life. I may have been an awkward, weird, ugly chubby kid (or, at least, I thought I was)- but, damn it, I could manipulate people on the internet, so I clearly had some capacity for power over other people.
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:21 AM on December 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

Anyway, the other part of the equation is that riling people is fun for some.

I know someone who is incredibly proud of how many online communities/message boards/youknowwhatImean she's been banned from. For her, it seems to be a combination of "Speaking Truth to Power!" and getting people all riled up - it's fun for her, and she enjoys the attention. I have not told her about MetaFilter.
posted by rtha at 10:41 AM on December 12, 2011 [4 favorites]

Because it's fun to watch people who treat Internet posting/their gamerscore/World of Warcraft/whatever with the seriousness of heart surgeons doing tricky surgery get completely bent out of shape for hours and hours with a few well-placed remarks. It's like sticking a pin in an over-inflated balloon to get the loud bang.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 10:46 AM on December 12, 2011 [6 favorites]

When I first read the post, I thought the people at Making Light had some good insight on trollish behavior, particularly in these three comments. There's also this post by a sad misguided soul.
posted by johnofjack at 10:47 AM on December 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

A friend of mine from college was a pretty hardcore internet troll (mostly on slashdot and k5), and we had a number of conversations about trolling and the different methods that he used. His particular strain of trolling was the false expert -- he would use intentionally incorrect information to start flamewars; he would drop into a conversation and insert some false facts to plant the seeds and let other people do all the arguing. He thought this was hilarious, but it seems like a pretty clear power move to me, the way that bullied kids become bullies themselves.

He wasn't above Goatse-bombing, though, but that was more of an obvious teenage-boy level prank. He never expressed any shame for either of these, and he still randomly IMs me nazi furry porn every once in a while.

Years later I realized that all of this was his Aspergers-y way of flirting with me.
posted by modernserf at 11:13 AM on December 12, 2011 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Maybe he enjoys arguments, and doesn't have a healthy way to enjoy them?

Join a debate club or some group where (good, healthy, constructive) arguing is valued, maybe?
posted by rokusan at 11:20 AM on December 12, 2011

Pre-internet I had a good friend in high school who was really invested in the notion that if you were clever enough you could essentially trick people into acting how you want. Internet trolling is about as close as it gets to this idea. I'd attribute it to a twisted sense of 'control'. By the time he'd gotten through college he was totally past that phase, fwiw.
posted by meinvt at 11:59 AM on December 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

I put trolls in the same category as people who are chronically late, or people who drive slowly in the left lane: They get satisfaction out of whatever pathetically small amount of control they can wield over others.

But I'm sure some are just flagrant assholes in every aspect of their lives.
posted by coolguymichael at 12:29 PM on December 12, 2011 [3 favorites]

speaking from experience, get the guy off the fucking internet and doing something in his life that makes him feel satisfied, no matter how minor.

fucking with people on the internet is totally satisfying but obviously not a good long-term concept for your sanity or karma.

also making friends in real life that you have mutually acknowledged "weird dick" tendencies to be weird dicks around in a non-shitty way has really helped me, but ymmv
posted by beefetish at 12:58 PM on December 12, 2011 [1 favorite]

A lot of the comments on here assume all trolls are just assholes, or entirely harmful to a society or community. I think that's wrong.

Because it's fun to watch people who treat Internet posting/their gamerscore/World of Warcraft/whatever with the seriousness of heart surgeons doing tricky surgery get completely bent out of shape for hours and hours with a few well-placed remarks. It's like sticking a pin in an over-inflated balloon to get the loud bang.

This is a good insight to what drives some trolls (not all, but some). Take 4chan and /b/ for example, the Internet uber-trolls. It's no coincidence that 4chan gave rise to Anonymous, probably one of the most important western social movements in the past decade. Trolling is a way of introducing chaos and disorder into a social system, and some systems need that chaos and disorder.

The community getting trolled believes it's abusive behavior, and sometimes it is, but you need that deflating and randomness sometimes.

A world entirely filled with trolls would be just as bad as a world entirely full of authoritative OCD freaks, but together they can form a balance.
posted by formless at 1:04 PM on December 12, 2011 [3 favorites]

I've known a few wayward trolls who kept in touch after years of watching them harass others. I actually found that they weren't the sad, pathetic people we often think they are who sit around forum hopping all day seeking prey.

In my experience, they tend to be hyper-intelligent and otherwise sweet people who -- as a means of escape -- use the internet to poke soft spots using their hidden smarts as a way of continuously digging into the person. Some of them have high-level stress jobs, a lot of them are taking intense coursework in college and a few I've met are brilliant people who just haven't found a path for themselves yet, so feel unfulfilled by their dead-end jobs.

The targets themselves are usually smart enough to warrant prodding them in the first place (stupid people aren't fun to troll unless they're rabid -- like you'll find on certain Conservative blogs), who either don't know they're being trolled or are aware and engage anyway.

There are obviously people out there that are dicks to be dicks, but I think that the real problem is that we have a layer of smart, quick-witted people who don't have another way of using this energy to be more impactful. I would also go so far as to say that if a certain community has trolls, it is up to the community management to deter these people instead of hoping their friends and family intervene first.

Get them involved, if they're going to be spending that much time on your board/blog/game and they think they have something to say -- offer them a position to do so pending they don't abuse the power. They just want attention for this behavior, so twist that behavior so that it works to benefit everyone.
posted by june made him a gemini at 1:07 PM on December 12, 2011 [4 favorites]

Attention.

A (false) sense of superiority. Haha, I have dimished you with my attack! makes him feel dominant. Bullies get the same hard-on from bullying. People who are strong and secure in themselves don't need false dominance. I think they then need to troll/bully even more, because they know that it's not real, and it makes them feel (secretly) small. Self-reinforcing behavior.

Tell him you worry that his unpleasant (jerk) behavior will start to invade real life, and see if he can find a way to feel good without being a troll.
posted by theora55 at 2:45 PM on December 12, 2011

Depends on what your idea of a troll is. (And what their idea of a troll is...) Does he just drop nonsense bombs into threads for the lulz, like yelling "PENIS" in a quiet theater? Or is he arguing with people with false sincerity?
posted by gjc at 3:40 PM on December 12, 2011

Best answer: Attention. A drama-queen by any other name. Making the world revolve around them. All publicity is good publicity. Social Incite versus social Insight.

I know people who troll (/drama-queen/troll-queen?) in real life. I imagine every so often they realise it actually makes them more miserable too. But they like the excitement, and attention, more than being happy themselves, and more than they feel guilty about trying to drag others down with them.

Basically, look up all the same stuff about how to stop being a drama-queen.


(Seriously, I've been a moderator on multiple forums, and when I found out that a new boyfriend used line-by-line rebuttals, and got into frequent flamewars? It threw a small relationship red flag. ;P Can't take off the mod hat...).
posted by Elysum at 5:40 PM on December 12, 2011 [2 favorites]

Because it's a weird outlet for releasing the desire to prove yourself dominant within a community. You know how dogs put their paws on you to show that they are above you in the hierarchy? It's like that but with people. Instead of wrestling in the mud or beating each other over the head, we get into 'sparring' matches on the internet. But unlike the polite jabs that occur in a regular day-to-day, there's so much less oversight on the web. Getting banned is not the same as being ostracized from a group of friends; a ban only requires you to register a new account. Because of the low bar of entry at a lot of sites, trolling proliferates.

Why do people specifically go for troll tactics? Because there's a long tradition of establishing intellectual superiority by argumentation in Western society. If you envision Socrates as the first troll who got banhammered from the mortal plan, then you've pretty much got the concept. But like most trolls, there's little philosophical or cultural substance as to why they're trying to engage in 'debate' other than they just felt like it that day.
posted by dubusadus at 9:56 AM on December 13, 2011 [1 favorite]