Troll (slang)

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In Internet terminology, a troll is someone who comes into an established community such as an online discussion forum, and posts inflammatory, rude, repetitive or offensive messages designed intentionally to annoy or antagonize the existing members or disrupt the flow of discussion, including the personal attack of calling others trolls. Often, trolls assume multiple aliases, or sock puppets.

Etymology

The contemporary use of the term first appeared on Usenet groups in the late 1980s. It is widely thought to be a contraction of the phrase "trolling for suckers," itself derived from the sport fishing technique of trolling. The latter can be compared with trawling.

The word likely gained currency because of its apt second meaning, drawn from the "trolls", which are portrayed in Scandinavian folklore, and children's tales, as often ugly, obnoxious creatures that are bent on mischief and wickedness. The image of the troll under the bridge in the "Three Billy Goats Gruff" emphasizes the troll's negative reaction to outsiders intruding on its physical environment, particularly those who intend to graze in its domain without permission.

The origin of the phrase has been discussed in oral arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court (eBay v. MercExchange, 29 March 2006):

"JUSTICE KENNEDY: Well, is -- is the troll the scary thing under the bridge, or is it a fishing technique?..."

"MR. PHILLIPS : For my clients, it's been the scary thing under the bridge...."

"JUSTICE KENNEDY: I mean, is that what the troll is?"

"MR. PHILLIPS: Yes, I believe that's... what it is, although...maybe we should think of it more as Orcs, now that we have a new generation."

Vicious circles

For many people, the characterising feature of trolling is the perception of intent to disrupt a community in some way. Inflammatory, sarcastic, disruptive or humorous content is posted, meant to draw other users into engaging the troll in a fruitless confrontation. The greater the reaction from the community the more likely the user is to troll again, as the person develops beliefs that certain actions achieve his/her goal to cause chaos. This gives rise to the often repeated protocol in Internet culture: "Do not feed the trolls."

Often, a person will post a sincere message about which he is emotionally sensitive. Skillful trolls know that an easy way to upset the person is to falsely claim that they are a "troll." In forums where most users are similar to each other, outsiders may be perceived as trolls simply because they do not fit into the social norms of that group. It can sometimes be difficult to distinguish between a user who merely has different values, views, or ideas, and a user who is intentionally trolling. This can lead to genuinely hostile behavior, including flame wars.

Internet troll communities have sprouted up all over the Internet. Troll groups are often established due to their members' ill behavior not being permitted nor tolerated on regular forums.

Troll culture

The long history of trolling, and the strong support for anonymous and pseudonymous discourse on the Internet, suggests that the story of the "anonymous troll" is only beginning, and will continue developing in subtlety and sophistication. Whether there can be a "culture" consisting of people who do not know each other, except through a common experience of being bounced from Internet forums, is questionable, but some do claim it is possible and already occurring.

There is strong evidence for this in the existence of forums that claim to exist specifically to support trolls and trolling, to exchange troll tips, and to identify targets that other trolls might fruitfully bait or debate.

Trolling culture is best observed in trolls, who do not know each other, working together. Because the common methods of creating inflammatory posts are well known, and a subject of jokes in many places on the Internet, it is sometimes possible for a troll to identify another troll in action. A troll, trolling another troll, often creates massive amounts of pretend drama between them that is taken seriously by non-troll observers (especially if they take sides). The end result is that the two trolls can work together to force a conversation to go off topic, or center a forum's discussion around themselves, more effectively than on their own.

Trolling as identity deception

A common tactic that many trolls resort to is the strategy of using multiple usernames or pseudonyms that are ready to use just in case a debate or argument emerges. By using multiple usernames (called "sock puppets" in this context) and a variety of artificial personalities the troll would have the ability to protect his or her image in a community. A troll would then also be able to increase his or her influence in an entire online community by simply using those other self serving nicks to increase the attention towards his or her most favored account. However, many users with more than one computer such as hardware buffs (Colloquial), computer repair shops and thrift stores often give each computer a unique name and use that name as the e-mail or newsgroup account username to identify the computer being used versus the user. Contrary to the purpose of deception this practice is followed with the intent of creating a verification record for the computer that was repaired or tested rather than to promote malice, ill will or evil intent. Sometimes the email reply address or other changeable header line is used for this purpose rather than the username line.

Online game communities that take tournament statistics and player rankings seriously are especially vulnerable to this type of trolling behavior. This is mainly due to the fact that since players take their rankings seriously, that some would resort to solidifying their reputations by creating self made threads designed to praise his or her favored account. Threads such as "most favorite players", "name your top ten players", etc. are suspected to be highly manipulated self-made threads designed to increase the influence and reputation of a specific username.

Pre-history

Prior to DejaNews's archiving of Usenet, accounts of trolling were sketchy, there being little evidence to sort through. After that time, however, the huge archives were available for researchers. Perhaps the earliest, although poorly documented, case is the 1982-83 saga of AlexAndJoan from the CompuServe forums. Van Gelder, a reporter for Ms. magazine, documented the incident in 1996 in an article for her publication. Alex (in real life a very shy 50 year old psychiatrist from New York) pretended to be a highly bombastic, anti-religious, post-car-accident, wheelchair-bound, mute woman named "Joan", "in order to better relate to his female patients". This went on for two years, and "Joan" had become a hugely detailed character, with an array of emotional relationships. These only began to fall apart after "Joan" coaxed an online friend of hers into an affair with Alex.

"Even those who barely knew Joan felt implicated — and somehow betrayed — by Alex's deception. Many of us on-line like to believe that we're a utopian community of the future, and Alex's experiment proved to us all that technology is no shield against deceit. We lost our innocence, if not our faith." (Van Gelder, 1996, p.534)

Trolling in the 1990s

One early reference to "troll" found in the Google Usenet archive was by user "Mark Miller", directed toward the user "Tad", on February 8, 1990 . However, it is unclear if this instance represents a usage of "troll" as it is known today, or if it was simply a chance choice of epithet:

"You are so far beyond being able to understand anything anyone here says that this is just converging on uselessness. The really sad part is that you really believe that you're winning. You are a shocking waste of natural resources — kindly re-integrate yourself into the food-chain. Just go die in your sleep you mindless flatulent troll."

The more likely derivation can be found in the phrase, "trolling for newbies", popularized in the early 1990s in the Usenet group, alt.folklore.urban. Commonly, what is meant is a relatively gentle inside joke by veteran users, presenting questions or topics that had been so overdone, only a new user would respond to them earnestly. For example, a veteran of the group might make a post on the common misconception that glass flows over time. Long-time readers would both recognize the poster's name and know that the topic had been done to death already anyhow, but new subscribers to the group would not "get it" and respond. These types of trolls served as a Shibboleth to identify group insiders. By the late 1990s, alt.folklore.urban had such heavy traffic and participation that trolling of this sort was frowned upon. Others expanded the term to include the practice of playing a seriously misinformed or deluded user, even in newsgroups where one was not a regular; these were often attempts at humor, rather than provocation. In such contexts, the noun, "troll", usually referred to an act of trolling, rather than to the author.

New users of the internet now use the word where they actually mean "flamebait".

Identity

In serious literature, the practice was first documented by Judith Donath (1999), who used several anecdotal examples from various Usenet newsgroups in her discussion. Donath's paper outlines the ambiguity of identity in a disembodied "virtual community" :

"In the physical world there is an inherent unity to the self, for the body provides a compelling and convenient definition of identity. The norm is: one body, one identity. ... The virtual world is different. It is composed of information rather than matter."

Donath provides a concise overview of identity deception games which trade on the confusion between physical and epistemic community:

"Trolling is a game about identity deception, albeit one that is played without the consent of most of the players. The troll attempts to pass as a legitimate participant, sharing the group's common interests and concerns; the newsgroups members, if they are cognizant of trolls and other identity deceptions, attempt to both distinguish real from trolling postings, and upon judging a poster a troll, make the offending poster leave the group. Their success at the former depends on how well they — and the troll — understand identity cues; their success at the latter depends on whether the troll's enjoyment is sufficiently diminished or outweighed by the costs imposed by the group.

Trolls can be costly in several ways. A troll can disrupt the discussion on a newsgroup, disseminate bad advice, and damage the feeling of trust in the newsgroup community. Furthermore, in a group that has become sensitized to trolling — where the rate of deception is high — many honestly naïve questions may be quickly rejected as trollings. This can be quite off-putting to the new user who upon venturing a first posting is immediately bombarded with angry accusations. Even if the accusation is unfounded, being branded a troll is quite damaging to one's online reputation." (Donath, 1999, p. 45)

Usage

The term troll is highly subjective. Some readers may characterize a post as trolling, while others may regard the same post as a legitimate contribution to the discussion, even if controversial. The term is often used to discredit an opposing position, or its proponent, by argument ad hominem. When appropriately applied to purposefully disruptive online behavior, the word troll economically converts an abstract code of online manners into a concrete image.

Often, calling someone a troll makes assumptions about a writer's motives that may be incorrect. Regardless of the writer's motives, controversial posts are likely to attract a corrective, patronizing or outraged response by those who do not distinguish between real physical community (where people are actually exposed to some shared risk of bodily harm by their actions), and epistemic community (based on a mere exchange of words and ideas). Customs of discourse, or etiquette, originating in physical communities are often applied naively to online discourse by newcomers who are not used to the range of views expressed online, often anonymously. Hence, both users and posts are commonly, and sometimes inaccurately, labelled as trolls when their content upsets people — ironically, the accusatory labeling of a troll may be more disruptive than the original alleged offense itself. Also, people may be more inclined to use epithets like troll in online public discussion than they would be in person, because online forums may seem more impersonal.

There is a quote on IMDb which says that the common troll does not understand the words 'opinion' and 'leave', meaning that it feels it has superior opinions and will not quit until reaching its own trolling satisfaction. Experienced participants in online forums know that the most effective way to discourage a troll is usually to ignore him or her, because responding encourages a true troll to continue disruptive posts to that forum — hence the often-seen warning "Please do not feed the troll", for which PDNFTT is a common initialism. Posting this warning publicly, in reply to a troll's behavior to discourage further replies, may discourage the troll. However, it can also have the reverse effect, becoming itself food for the troll. Therefore, when a forum participant sees an apparently innocent answer to a troll as potential troll food, it may be more prudent to deliver the "Please do not feed the troll" warning in a private message to the respondent (for example, by email, or to the respondent's wiki Talk page).

Trolling in different Internet media

Trolling takes distinct forms in different media; it started on newsgroups, and as the Internet has evolved, so has trolling.

Usenet — hierarchies of newsgroups limit trolls' exposure, but cross-posting can overcome this. Some Internet service providers limit the number of newsgroups to which a message can be cross-posted. In a notable example, alt.net instituted a cross-post limit after the trolls on the system had become so notorious that a campaign was waged for other systems to cease exchanging news with alt.net until they did something about the problem.
Mailing lists are usually controlled by moderators, so unwanted contributors can quickly be banned.
SlashCode-based forums use a rating system so that readers can moderate a post up or down from its initial rating. Readers can then choose to ignore posts that others have "modded down." Timing of trolls is particularly important, since earlier posts are more likely to be read than later posts. An ideal troll would generate much heated discussion and posting without further intervention from the troll.
Wikis — the flat, asynchronous and open model allows anyone to post anything; users work to undo negative changes using the built-in reversion tools, but this requires hundreds of volunteers to monitor large popular sites. Trolls tend to be more subtle than in discussion groups, often posting material that could be legitimate, but will cause controversy by challenging the current power structure. Difficulty is compounded by the impossibility of discerning whether a user is simply espousing a controversial opinion, or trolling.
Weblogs — in their most common form as a personal soapbox with the ability for anybody to leave comments, popular weblogs often make effective springboards for trolls, either as inflammatory comments or provocative entries. The ease with which weblogs can be linked encourages troll propagation.
IRC — the open nature of most IRC channels on popular networks enables a troll to enter and utilise any of a range of techniques, ranging from simple crapflooding to subtly irritating remarks which trigger angry responses. The ease of evading bans from channels and servers and the volatile nature of many IRC users can allow trolls to perpetuate indefinitely.
Multiplayer Gaming — online gaming attracts a large number of trolls, who take advantage of the combative atmosphere and their general anonymity to disparage other players. See pwn or noob for more information. Team killing and griefing -- breaking the social rules of the game to harass other players -- can also be considered similar.
Online Fantasy Sports — A troll will infiltrate a free, online league with multiple teams from different identity accounts and then attempt to make lopsided trades of players to improve one team. The troll will leave numerous messages on the league bulletin board from different identities to give the appearance of legitimacy to otherwise illicit behavior. Players that object to the obvious charade may be showered with insults and other attempts at evasion.
Web forums — Forums of all kinds attract trolls, whose behavior differs little from the above examples. Few forums are free of trolls, except for very small sites and those with very strict policies on trolling, however even the most strict of forums may still have Troll issues.

Defensive and recreational trolls

In some Internet subcultures, notably Kibology, the words "troll" and "trolling" have taken on a different meaning. Instead of the aggressive invader and his loud, often abusive posts, the terms refer to someone more subtle, seeking to create a loud, indeed furious response, to a post that may be moderate and even reasonable in its tone, while pushing the victim's hot buttons. This treatment may be applied to invaders, especially cranks such as Archimedes Plutonium or George Hammond (Scientific Proof of God, not the TV character) and the loud, obnoxious, self-centered kind of invader called trolls elsewhere.

Trolling may also be done as a kind of practical joke among group members. Those who can see through such trolls quickly, and respond in kind, are held in high esteem, while those who fall for the trick may eventually be informed "YHBT"--You Have Been Trolled. The admiring response to a particularly subtle troll is "IHBT"--I Have Been Trolled.

Examples

One-shot trolls

One-shot troll messages are intended to be disruptive, and tend to be very obvious to ensure that they will receive annoyed replies.

Disruptive trolls

Off topic messages: Those that are irrelevant to the focus of the forum. This can also be done in the middle of an existing thread to attempt to hijack the thread, or otherwise change the topic at hand. Off topic messages usually occur when a member has been completely disproved in a serious debate, thus causing that member to use his or her other multiple pseudonyms for the purposes of changing the subject matter. These disruptions may result in the degeneration of a well informed thread into a heated juvenile exchange consisting of insults and childish accusations between multiple parties.
Page breaking: Filling up fields with large pictures or characters to make previous posts unreadable. A skilled troll will use an extremely wide and narrow picture that blends into the forum background to make it harder to catch.
Offensive media: Annoying sound files or disturbing pictures in a message, or linking to shock sites that contain such media. Often these links are disguised as legitimate links.
Inflammatory messages, including racist, sexist, classist or otherwise needlessly hateful comments.
Opinionated statements: Posting messages expressing their own opinions as generally accepted facts without offering any proof or analysis.
Spoiling: Deliberately revealing the ending or an important part of movie, book, game etc.
Bumping an old discussion, or rehashing a highly controversial past topic, particularly in smaller online communities.
Deliberate and repeated misspelling of other people's nicks in order to disturb or irritate them in a conversation.
Promising nonexistent pornography to people who post in the forum, producing an interminable flood of "please send" messages (especially common in the alt.sex Usenet hierarchy in the mid-1990s)
Defensive trolls:

Attention-seeking trolls

This class of trolls seeks to incite as many responses as possible and to absorb a disproportionate share of the collective attention span.

Advertising another forum, especially a rival or a hated forum.
Claiming to be someone they cannot possibly be: "As an actual, real-life samurai, I have some problems with (the film) The Seven Samurai."
No longer having affiliation to or current knowledge of the subject at hand, yet continually posting opinions and commentary as "experts".
Messages containing a deliberate flaw or error: "I think 2001: A Space Odyssey is Roman Polanski's best film." Or "Federico Fellini is the Greatest Living American Director"
Asking for help with an implausible task or problem: "How do I season my Crock Pot? I don't want everything I cook in it to taste the same."
Intentionally naive questions: "Can I cook pasta in Evian instead of water?"
Trying to look for vulnerable people and being offensive to them.
Intentional typos: "Does anyone have a copy of Super Maria Bras. for the Nintendo?" There are also many common usage in arguing against software, such as, "Who here likes Microsoft Windows XP?"
Messages containing a self-referential appeal to status. "Pepsi is for white trash. I prefer a real soft drink like Coke."
Favoring other software or rivals, especially on product support or development communities. A well-fought battle across many forums are people posting on phpBB support forums or development boards arguing points like "vBulletin has this feature and pwns phpBB", slandering something like a free and open source platform against an expensive, high-end commercial product.
Intentionally posting an outrageous argument, deliberately constructed around a fundamental but obfuscated flaw or error. Often the poster will become defensive when the argument is refuted, and may continue the thread through the use of further flawed arguments; this is referred to as "feeding" the troll.
A subclass of the above is the flawed proof of an important unsolved mathematical problem or impossibility (for example, 1 = 2); however, these may not always be troll-posts, and are sometimes at least mathematically interesting.
Politically contentious messages: "Everyone knows that all Republicans/Democrats are evil."
Posting politically sensitive images in inappropriate places.
Feigning innocence, after a flamewar ensues.
Off-topic complaints about personal life, even threats of suicide: sometimes, this is the "cry for help" troll. In other instances, this type of trolling may be for amusement. If the motive is amusement, the troll may post ridiculous comments seemingly out of the blue. "I want to marry a hyena."
Plural or paranoid answers to personal opinions expressed by individuals: "I don't think that all of you really believe that -— you're just ganging up on me!"
Paramour trolls get a thrill from establishing serial online affairs with females of a group. This incites public rivalry among the women who once thought the nicknames, poetry, and declarations of affection were exclusive to them. Since the online love affair is developed separately in chat programs, it takes a long time for the online cat-fight to be detected.
Combinations of the above. For example, a troll combines inflammatory statements with poor grammar and Internet slang (also known as 'netspeak', 'chatspeak', or 'leetspeak'): "lmfao! d00d, ur so week minded an predictable i thought i wan iggied i play ya like a card... pwned j00 n00b f00! l4m3r! w00t!"
Pretending to be a scriptwriter on a long running TV show (e.g. Lost) and giving away false spoilers.

Other examples

Some trolls may denounce a particular religion in a religion newsgroup, though historically, this would have been called "flamebait". Like those who engage in flaming, self-proclaimed or alleged Internet trolls sometimes resort to innuendo or misdirection in the pursuit of their objective. It is possible to distinguish between comments that are flamebait and as a result of trolling: flames have the intent of being anti-social and offensive, while trolling comments are intended to provoke a reaction, though trolling comments may also be perceived as being anti-social, although that may not have been the intent of the author.

A variant of the second variety (inflammatory messages) involves posting content obviously at odds with the (stated or unstated) focus of the group or forum; for example, posting cat-meat recipes on a pet lovers forum, posting evolutionary theory on a creationist forum (or vice versa), or posting messages about how all dragons are boring in the USENET group alt.fan.dragons. Other examples include fans of TV shows, movies, music artists or videogames going onto forums of rival shows/movies/artists/games and flaming them; for example, Halo vs. other first-person shooters in videogame forums, and flame wars between The Simpsons, South Park, and/or Family Guy forums, three popular and similar-themed adult cartoons that occasionally take pot shots at each other in real life.

The "sock-puppet" troll enters a forum using several different identities. As provocative postings from one identity draw increasingly critical comment from other forum members, the troll enters the discussion under a second identity in support of the first. Alternatively, the troll may under the second identity criticise the first in order to develop credibility or esteem on the forum. (However, use of alternate IDs to identify a particular computer or the changing of a user ID after system crashes and other legitimate reasons for using more than one ID by the same person may not be intended as a deception.)

Cross-posting is a popular method of Usenet trolls: a cross-posted article can be discussed simultaneously in several unrelated and/or opposing newsgroups; this is likely to result in a flame war. For instance, an anti-fast food flame bait might be cross-posted to healthy eating groups, environmentalist groups, animal rights groups, as well as a totally off-topic artificial intelligence newsgroup.

An example of a successful troll is the well-known "Oh how I envy American students" USENET thread which had 3,000-odd follow-ups. Trolling may go beyond merely making posts and may include creation of new public forums or websites. A new USENET newsgroup, "alt.genius.bill-palmer", was created by Igor Chudov for the purpose of creating an outlet for discussing a controversial USENET personality, Bill Palmer, himself an alleged USENET troll who managed to make his personality the center of all discussions -- a characteristic that is common amongst attention-seeking trolls. A swirl of messages attempting to disprove his alleged status as genius, cross-posted to a wide variety of groups, made "a.g.b-p", the most popular new "alt.*" newsgroup of the year. Its creator was nominated for the "Troll of the Year 1996" award.

Motivation

Self-proclaimed "trolls" may style themselves as devil's advocates, gadflies or culture jammers, challenging the dominant discourse and assumptions of forum discussions in an attempt to break the status quo of groupthink — the belief system that prevails in their absence.

Some critics claim that genuine "devil's advocates" generally identify themselves as such, out of respect for etiquette and courtesy, while trolls may dismiss etiquette and courtesy altogether. Most discussion of what motivates Internet trolls comes from other Internet users who claim to have observed trolling behavior. There is little scholarly literature to describe either the term or the phenomenon. The comments of accused trolls might be unreliable, since they may, in fact, be intending to stir controversy, rather than to advance understanding of the phenomenon. Likewise, accusers are often motivated by a desire to defend a particular Internet project, and references to an Internet user as a troll might not be based on the actual goals of the person so named. As a result, identifying the goals of Internet trolls is most often speculative. Still, several basic goals have been attributed to Internet trolls, according to the type of disruption they are believed to be provoking.

Further complicating the issue, many accusatory labelers fail to first question whether the alleged "troll" material actually is disruptive (a requisite component of trolling behavior) before being declared as such. Thus, many "trolls" are born of a second party's hasty inference of supposed intent, accurate or not.

Proposed motivations for trolling:

Trolling can be described as a breaching experiment, originally conceived of by sociologist Harold Garfinkel, which, because of the use of an alternate persona, allows for normal social boundaries and rules of etiquette to be tested or otherwise broken, without serious consequences. This may be part of an attempt to test the limits of some discourse, or to identify reactive personalities. By removing identities and histories from the situation, leaving only the discourse, some scientists believe that it is possible to run social engineering experiments using troll methods. However, few believe that troll organizations are engaged in science, and a few scattered individuals, with no particular method or thesis, cannot be described as scientists. They might however be engaged in research.
Anonymous attention-seeking: The troll seeks to dominate the thread by inciting anger, and effectively hijacking the topic at hand.
Amusement: To some people, the thought of a person getting angry over statements from total strangers is entertaining. This could be categorized as a form of schadenfreude - trolls with amusement motives deriving pleasure from the actual frustration/anger/pain (or what they may perceive in their own minds as such) from their targets. This type of trolling is common on Internet forums.
Anger: Some people use trolling to express their hostility to a group or point of view.
Cry for help: Many so-called trolls, in their postings, indicate disturbing situations regarding family, relationships, substances, and school — although it is generally impossible to know whether this is just simply part of the troll. Some believe that trolling is an aggressive, confrontational way by which trolls seek a sort of tough love guidance in an anonymous forum.
Self-proclaimed trolls, and their defenders, suggest that trolling is a clever way of improving discussion, or an alternative method of viewing power-relations.
Setting oneself a challenge, simply to see if one can do it, and be successful: One member of an online forum, for example, joins under an unrecognizable identifying name to see if the other members of the forum can be fooled and, if so, for how long.
Wasting others' time: One of the greatest themes in trolling is the idea that a troll can spend one minute of time posting a troll, causing multiple other people to waste several minutes of their time, catalytically affecting others. Most trolls enjoy the idea that they can waste others' time at comparatively little effort on their behalf.
Domino effect: Related to amusement, but in a more specific fashion, it starts large chain reactions in response to one's initial post. Achieving a disproportionately large response to a small action is the general theme. This is similar to how a young child that goes "missing" (but is actually hiding) may act with glee, seeing a large number of people conducting a massive search in response to the supposed disappearance.
Suppression of information: A particularly nihilistic troll often aims to curb the sharing of helpful information between forum participants. For example, the skilled troll can turn an informative discussion about tips and techniques on coping with disease X... into a completely useless flame fest. This can keep essential information out of the hands of those who need it most, thus proliferating human suffering. A slightly less hostile variant is the supression of a discussion the troll does not like or finds offensive. A troll trolling a thread of sexist jokes would fit into this category.
Affect change in user opinions: A troll may state extreme positions to make his or her actual beliefs seem moderate (this often involves sock puppeteering or duals, where the bad cop is a sock-puppet troll) or, alternatively, play the role of the devil's advocate to strengthen the opposing convictions (with which he or she actually agrees).
Test the integrity of a system against social attacks or other forms of misbehavior: For example, blatantly violating terms-of-use in order to see whether any action is taken by the site administrators.
Overcome feelings of inferiority or powerlessness by getting the experience of controlling an environment. This type of trolling is sometimes used by forum moderators and list owners to stamp out other trolls or demonstrate control. Trolling of this kind can backfire when perpetrated by someone with authority over the use of a forum. If a moderator or list owner demonstrates that they are easily irritated or angered on their forum, especially in response to a troll, trolls may see the forum as an easy target.
Self-promotion.
Fight "groupthink": Many trolls defend their actions as shocking people out of entrenched conformism.
Satire: In these cases, the individuals do not think of themselves as trolls, but misunderstood humorists or political commentators.
Satisfaction gained from personal attacks.
Harassment: following a person — who has been targeted for harassment in one forum, but who has chosen to escape being victimized by moving on — and trolling the forum as a means of making that new "home" an uncomfortable place for that person to be online.
Lowering signal to noise ratio: On Slashdot, moderation points, that could be used to moderate up alternative posts, are wasted on moderating down things like ASCII pictures of the goatse man. At certain thresholds, this lowers the quality of comments.
Anonymously testing an alternate persona.
Emptying a forum: this is usually only feasible if the forum is small. However, trolls can change the amount of use even large forums receive. Trolling to empty a forum often involves baiting forum users, moderators and even owners into becoming so angry that they post responses that make themselves appear as or even more annoying than the troll(s). The troll may post seemly innocent comments to elicit rude responses from prominent members of a forum, thus making the responding member or members appear as trolls and flamers to bystanders. As a result, forum users in general may become disgusted and leave the forum. In some instances, long-time web patrons may tire of trolls and leave if the trolling significantly disrupts the forum. The trolling may also discourage potential users from joining the forum.
Agents provocateurs: Attempting to discredit a group by posing as a member of that group, and posting inflammatory messages to give the appearance that the group espouses such opinions. This type of troll sometimes gives him or herself away fairly quickly.

It is difficult to gauge the motivations of trolls, since most of the justifications offered by alleged trolls for their behavior are nothing more than ruses concocted to continue whatever mischief they imagine themselves to have started. This is unfortunate because, as the above list supposes, there are legitimate reasons for engaging in the sort of actions for which trolling is known. Still, etiquette is simple and straightforward enough that most people can advance the aims professed by self-exculpatory trolls, without actually resorting to these methods. Since there is a wide spectrum of possible motivations for trolls, some of these functions being benevolent and others, clearly malevolent, to typecast users as trolls in the negative sense is often rash.

Some users of Internet forums are considered to be "trollhunters", or "trollbaiters". They willingly enter into conflicts when trolls emerge. Often, trollhunters are as disruptive as trolls. A single troll-post may be ignored, but if ten trollhunters "pounce", following a troll, they will drive the thread off-topic.

Resolutions and alternatives

In general, conventional wisdom advises users to avoid feeding trolls, and to ignore temptations to respond. Responding to a troll inevitably drives discussion off-topic, to the dismay of bystanders, and supplies the troll with the craved attention. When trollhunters pounce on the trolls, ignorers reply with: "YHBT. YHL. HAND.," or "You have been trolled. You have lost. Have a nice day." However, since trollbaiters (like trolls) are often conflict-seekers themselves, the loss usually is not on the part of the trollhunter; rather, the losers are the other forum-users who would have preferred that the conflict did not emerge at all.

Literature on conflict resolution suggests that labeling participants in Internet discussions as "trolls" can perpetuate the unwanted behaviors. A person rejected by a social group, both online and offline, may assume an antagonistic role toward it, and seek to further annoy or anger members of the group. The "troll" label, often a sign of social rejection, may therefore perpetuate trolling.

Better results normally ensue when users take the moderator role and describe more constructive behaviors in a non-judgmental, non-confrontational way. Trolls are excited by trollhunters, and frustrated by "ignorers," and neither of these emotions produce positive results for the forum. Engaging trolls results in "flame wars." Trolls frustrated by the "ignore strategy" may leave the forum (and either troll elsewhere, or become constructive users) or may become progressively more inflammatory until they get a response.

Novice trolls may experience serious "troll's remorse," a feeling of great regret after losing their account (whether it be from an Internet service provider or from a website) as a consequence of their reckless trolling.

There are those who argue that a lack of response to trolling can also inspire trolling, a "Damned if you do, damned if you don't" result. Particularly fanatical or irrational commentators will respond to a forum that irks them largely independent of responses. Trolls also often continue to post, taking umbrage with peripheral arguments or arguments that were less well-founded, until their positions become untenable, then turning either to insults or moving to another topic. By this logic, relentless confrontation through argument of trolls (when such argument is to be found) can be vital.

Usefulness of trolling

A major debate on the Internet is whether or not trolls perform any useful function.

Users performing many useful, but controversial, functions are often decried as trolls, and in these cases, so-called trolling may actually benefit certain users on a forum that it occurs on. For example, the presence of a radical right-winger, described as a troll, may allow a conservative lurker to feel more comfortable expressing his or her viewpoints, which seem very moderate in contrast. On the other hand, if trollhunters mount a flame war against this right-wing troll, the conservative bystander may feel less comfortable in expressing her views, to the detriment of the forum. As much as trolls claim to fight groupthink, they may actually encourage it by solidifying opinion against them.

Trolls may also make people question the validity of what is read both on the Internet, and from other sources. Trolls show that expressing any opinion is akin to expressing an informed and considered opinion, and may get as much visibility. It has also been argued that shock jocks, and newspaper columnists, often track public opinions by trolling. John C. Dvorak, and Slashdot, have often been cited as examples.

Even though useful content and productive users are sometimes decried as trolls, the consensus is that pure "trolling" benefits only the troll and trollhunters, and has no place in any forum. Most forums reject the claim that pure and intentional trolling serves any useful purpose. Some trolls have been known to try to troll threads into deletion, serving as a form of negative reinforcement to "newbies", but also helping at the same time to reduce the clutter of spam threads on a large message board. In many cases, trolling can lead a forum administrator or moderator into implementing features to the site to prevent trolling. Although this could be regarded as improving the website itself, it remains that the features would not have been needed, had the trolls not been there.

Behavioral issues

Precise definitions of "troll" have been difficult because such definitions rely on assumptions about internal motivation, which have been difficult to conclusively prove. Some behaviors, such as "name-calling" are not candidates for a "troll" classification unless their intent is to provoke a reaction, as "name-calling" could be considered more anti-social, perhaps falling under the classification of "flamer" instead.

Some have suggested that instead of calling somebody a "troll", they should focus on specific behaviors that a group finds uncomfortable, and enforce behavioral rules to consistently and fairly prevent such behaviors. The idea is to focus on the undesirable behavior itself, rather than on the motivation for the behavior. If such behaviors cannot be identified, then perhaps the alleged troll should be tolerated out of fairness. Some call this, the "If you cannot identify it, then tolerate it" plan.

A general consensus could be that a post intended to be upsetting or offensive is a flame while a post attempting to incite these is trolling.

External links

Internet Trolls - A Guide : Basic advice and useful information.
Annoy.com: A professional troll who fights for freedom of speech.
Adequacy.org: Archive of Adequacy.org, a troll site.
Convincing Ground Road Trolling poets given a taste of their own medicine.
Searching for Safety Online: Managing "Trolling" in a Feminist Forum
Trolling for information: How to use trolling techniques in order to lure information (together with fravia's "Trolls and Schopenhauer" comparison).

Troll FAQs

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