Online Trolls Just Assholes All the Time, Study Finds
gizmodo.com> The study found that those who are hostile in political discussions on the internet report to be just as hostile in political discussions face-to-face.
They asked people to SELF REPORT if they held the same attitudes offline as online, and of course they all said YES.
This is like asking people if they are honest people.
This study is worthless.
It's sad the Troll now means asshole. Ken M [1] style trolling is one of my favorite things on the internet. Even David Thorne's [2] slightly more aggressive Trolling is fantastic. I think we need to separate this from online bullies.
Troll always meant asshole. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2...
The only people who cling to this idea are the ones who need it to excuse their own shitty behavior.
Trolling is essentially online pranking. There's good-natured "smile, you're on candid camera" pranks, and then there's just being an asshole.
I wouldn't call it "pranking". I would call it a subversive action from a deep sarcastic view.
E.g. I'm pretty sure some people might think that "swatting" is a form of trolling.
"Ken's comments are usually benign, with his comments displaying a complete lack of understanding of the featured topic, while other commenters take him seriously"
That was the OG trolling, you were wasting peoples time for laugh while they were educating you about something.
Term got hijacked and morphed into causing mental trauma to people.
One was harmless prank causing eye rolling, other mental trauma.
Trolling is a spectrum, people
Trolling is a art
Thanks for reminding me about David Thorne. Priceless.
you are quite right.
i remember a time when seeing the troll emoji meant someone was being pranked and the small communities i was part of enjoyed the laughter.
nowadays, i wouldn't bother using that emoji. besides, i don't think it made it to the standard emojis.
there is... just something about things becoming popular or going mainstream and turning bad. countless of benign things became harmful once they went mainstream.
Wow! I haven't uncontrollably cried with laughter like that for so long, KenM is my new hero.
Thank you so much for the recommendation!
Oh wow, that's quite a blast from the past - haven't read David Thornes antics in a while..
Also, it reminded me of http://dontevenreply.com/
I'm so glad you shared that. It's brilliant.
And Fansy the Bard. Sometimes trolls really can make an online community a better place.
Wow, I had no idea troll carried a similar connotation problem as hacker
It doesn't, we didn't call them trolls on Usenet as a positive thing. The first trolls were still assholes and existed mainly to disrupt conversation and try to start fights between each other. If the height of your personal accomplishments was starting a vicious flamewar you were just a jerk. Hacker on the other hand did not involve the current negative connotations.
Ah ok, so maybe there is a need of a term for online pranksters.
My personal fav was the guy on craigslist that pretended to be an attractive young woman looking for sex w randos. All 'she' needed was a photo of their drivers license to make sure they weren't creeps/as insurance.
This guy tracked down every man's spouse and told them what was up. He was sued (and lost, iirc, after about 100 men were divorced), and ended up being interviewed by the nyt. BUT he picks up the interviewer in a limo with his gf near an abandoned mall or something. he thought trolling was going to change the world, his gf thought he was jesus, there was champagne and it was an all around weird experience for the reporter. They honestly sounded like real live discordians.
This is probably getting close to being 15 or 20 years old now, but it was pioneering.
Yeah I had a few what of it.
This just seems like someone out to wreck lives. There must have been at least a few victims that didn’t deserve that, even if some did.
That sounds like weev
Thank you, I'm pretty sure this was it. Pure gold.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weev
Just your regular, garden variety rapscallion, right there. Not at all a perfect example of the title thread's point.
It's interesting that, on a thread about how trolling used to be good-natured, you brought up a literal neo-Nazi[1].
So it seems like this study's findings are probably not far from the truth.
1. https://www.newsweek.com/neo-nazi-andrew-weev-auernheimer-da...
Yeah I also think we should disband NASA for their ties to von Braun.
Honestly, who gives a fuck. It was funny, and not a racist deed. He fucked with scumbags here.
E: been on craigslist lately?
OP is about how trolls seem to be jerks in real life.
Then someone says they miss the non-malicious strain of trolling, where the person wasn't a jerk.
Then you bring up an example of that, and he happens to be a jerk.
Seems relevant to the article. I didn't say anything about disbanding NASA, that came out of nowhere. And I have no idea what the rest of your comment (craigslist?) means.
I'm still drunk what are you doing?
https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/325699-greater-internet-fuck...
This theory may be in jeopardy.
Thought this was from The Onion.
I agree with what others are saying here.
I usually give thoughtful responses, but I am for sure can be satirical and can be pretty iron harsh when I think someone is an idiot.
I have been called a troll many times, when I know I have not been one. Many others have liked my comments.
Unfortunately, there is no studies on humorless assholes.
There's that study that shows that 80% of drivers think that they are above average drivers. I think that is the same with humor. Except 97.9% of people think that they have an above average sense of humor.
I like what one of the sentence in the wikipedia entry says under "satire".
"Common uncomprehending responses to satire include revulsion (accusations of poor taste, or that "it's just not funny" for instance) and the idea that the satirist actually does support the ideas, policies, or people he is attacking."
Voltaire wrote the greatest satirical work in Western Civilization - "Candide". Voltaire signed with a pseudonym: "Monsieur le docteur Ralph", or "Doctor Ralph". Candide was in the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, the Roman Catholic Church's list of prohibited books. Candide's ban lasted into the twentieth century in the United States. For example, Candide was barred from entering America: in February 1929, a US customs official in Boston prevented a number of copies of the book, deemed "obscene".
So, I'm SURE that all those stiff humorless assh-les thought Voltaire was a troll and an assh-le.
So, really, my take on it is, that I don't give one little sh-t what people think of me, beyond a certain point. If I know I'm not being an assh-le, then that is all that counts to me, and everyone else is wrong, even if it is 95% of reddit, haha.