Troll (slang)

On the Internet, the term troll is a slang term used to describe both a person and a post (on a newsgroup, wiki, or other forum) thought to be intended to incite controversy or conflict. Self-proclaimed trolls and their defenders suggest that trolling is a clever way of improving discussion; however the term is perhaps more usually applied to insubstantial irritation that disrupts discourse.

It should be noted that there is no official definition of "troll", and that the term is almost always applied as an insult; for example, an individual posting honestly-held opinions that are considered controversial by the majority is often labeled as a troll. A troll's primary incentive is said to be the incitement of hot words, paranoia and bad feelings. See the section on "Usage", below.

Trolling is often described as an online version of the breaching experiment, where social boundaries and rules of etiquette are broken. Self-proclaimed trolls often style themselves as Devil's Advocates or gadflies, challenging the dominant discourse and assumptions of the forum they are 'trolling' in an attempt to subvert and introduce different ways of thinking; however, true "Devil's Advocates" generally identify themselves as such for the sake of etiquette; trolls do not feel so bound.

Trolls are sometimes caricatured as socially-inept. This is often due to fundamental attribution error, as it is usually impossible to know the real traits of an individual solely from their online discourse. Indeed, since intentional trolls are alleged to knowingly flout social boundaries, it is difficult to typecast them as socially inept when they have arguably proven adept at their goal of inciting conflict.

A troll's reactions to being identified as a troll often give the game away. A person unjustly accused of being a troll may be hurt and express indignation. A troll is more likely to react with verbal abuse, raising the stakes with inflammatory remarks maligning the motivation of the accuser, and may pursue his/her perceived enemy from site to site.

Origins

The terms "trolling" and "troll-posting", like the term flamebait, originated as a fishing metaphor: like people who troll for fish, trolls were "baiting" reactions of anger, shock, or argument. Later, the verb became a noun; a "troll-poster" was simply called a "troll", an intentional comparison with the ugly, mean-tempered troll of folklore.

Research and study: "trolling" as identity deception

Pre-history

Prior to the acquisition by Google of the Usenet archives, accounts of trolling were sketchy, there being little evidence to sort through. After this time however, the huge archives were available for researchers. Perhaps the earliest known, although poorly documented case is the 1982-1983 saga of AlexAndJoan from CompuServe forums. Van Gelder, a reporter for Ms Magazine documented the incident in 1996 in an article for Ms Magazine. Alex (in real life a 50+ shy Jewish 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 began to fall apart only 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 experiement 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

The first reference to 'trolling' in the Google Usenet archive was Miller (1990, February 8). In serious literature the practice was first documented by Donath (1999), who used several anecdotal examples from various Usenet newsgroups in her discussion. Donath's paper outlines the ambiguousness 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."

We owe physical bodies several things, including empathy, privacy and respects for human rights and free speech, Can "no body" have the same status as "some body"? If so, doesn't this mean we are letting ghosts run our "community"?" 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 naive 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

Some feel that using the noun (calling someone a troll) makes unnecessary assumptions about a writer's motives, whereas using the verb (calling a post trolling) describes the reception of a post without making assumptions about motives. Such assumptions would generally be an example of the fundamental attribution error i.e. inferring that behavior results from a person's nature or personality rather than examining behavior in the context of events surrounding the behavior. In other words, "trolling" may have more to do with context than with personality. Also, it may be possible to troll unintentionally. Regardless, both users and posts are commonly labelled as trolls when their content upsets people.

The term "troll" is highly subjective, and some posts will look like "trolling" to some while seeming like meaningful contributions to others. For example, a so-called "troll" may be playing "Devil's advocate" by stating conservative opinions in a liberal forum. Behavior which might be considered a simple rampage or an emotional outburst in other environments is often tagged with the term "troll" in internet discussion.

The term is frequently misused to discredit an opposing position in an argument. This usually amounts to an undefensible ad hominem argument: many views that have met with opposition and even the ridicule of experts have subsequently been found to be justified, so the label "troll" used this way is actually likely to indicate a correct but controversial position that is stirring up flames precisely because it has challenged a doctrine others actually realize is wrong. (It is quite possible to stir up controversy with a wrong argument, but these can more effectively be met by simply responding to the substantive issue.)

Possible reasons people use more slang monikers in Internet-mediated discussion include the feeling of anonymity and impersonal perceptions of other conversants.

Regardless of the writer's motives, controversial posts are virtually guaranteed, in most online forums, to earn a corrective or 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, and epistemic community based on mere exchange of words and ideas. Customs of discourse, or etiquette, that originated in such physical communities are often applied naively by newcomers to the Internet who are not used to the range of views expressed online - especially due to increased anonymity.

Trolling in different internet media

Trolling takes distinct forms in different media, while it started on newsgroups, as the internet has evolved, so has trolling.

• Usenet — hierarchies of newsgroups limit trolls' exposure, but crossposting can overcome this. Some Internet Service Providers implement limits on the number of newsgroups a message can be crossposted to. In one notable example, alt.net instituted a crosspost limit after the trolls on the system had become so notorious that Peter da Silva instituted a campaign for other systems to cease exchanging news with alt.net until they did something about the problem.
• Mailing lists — usually controlled by moderators, so trolls and unwanted contributors can quickly be banned.
• Slashdot-type forums with the SlashCode engine 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 anything less than the first 20 or so posts is unlikely to be read. 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. Difficulty is compounded by the impossibility of discerning whether a user is simply espousing a controversial opinion, or trolling.

Examples

Common types of troll messages or activities:

• off topic messages — "Can anyone help me make a webpage?" "No, this is a music forum."
• inflammatory messages — "You are an idiot for including this type of message in your list."
• messages containing an obvious flaw or error — "I think 2001: A Space Odyssey is Roman Polanski's best movie."
• intentionally naive or politically contentious messages — "I think George W. Bush is the best/worst President ever."
• 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.
  • a subclass of the above is the flawed proof of an important unsolved mathematical problem or impossibility (e.g. 1 = 2); these are not always troll-posts and are usually at least mathematically interesting.
• including offensive media such as 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.
• after a flamewar ensues, pretending to be innocent.
• posting plot spoilers to popular movies and books without warning.
• posting politically sensitive images. On May 1, 2004, trolls on Fark.com and other sites posted the infamous "Mission Accomplished" photo. (That date, in 2003, was when President Bush declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq.)
• off-topic complaints about personal life; sometimes this is the "cry for help" troll.

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 objectives.

A variant of the second variety (inflammatory messages) involves posting content obviously severely contradictory to 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 posting messages about how all dragons are boring in the USENET group alt.fan.dragons.

Cross posting is a popular method of choice by 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 got 3000+ followups.

Motivation

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.

Proposed motivations for trolling:

• Anonymous attention-seeking: The troll seeks to dominate the thread by inciting anger, and effectively hijacking the topic at hand.
• Cry for help: Many so-called trolls, in their postings, indicate disturbing situations regarding family, relationships, substances, and school. Some believe that trolling is an aggressive, confrontational way by which trolls seek a sort of "tough love" guidance in an anonymous forum.
• Effect change in user opinions: A troll may state extreme positions to make his or her actual beliefs seem moderate (this often involves sock puppeteering, where the "bad cop" is a sock-puppet troll) or, alternatively, play the role of "Devil's advocate" to strengthen opposing convictions (with which he or she usually actually agrees).
• Test the integrity of a system against "social attacks" or other forms of misbehavior: For example, blanking a Wikipedia page in order to see how quickly it will be reinstated. (Please don't do this.)
• Amusement: To some people, the thought of a 70-year-old Internet user being sent to a sexually explicit or gross image is genuinely funny. Individuals of this sort are generally thought immature and annoying.
• Domino effect': Related to amusement, but a more specific fashion: starting 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.
• Fight "groupthink": Many trolls defend their actions as, when a sort of conformism settles, shocking people out of it.
• Satire: In these cases, the individuals do not think of themselves as trolls, but misunderstood humorists or political commentators.
• Personal attacks against one particular user or group of users.
• Self-promotion.

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". While they do not actively seek conflict, as trolls do, they willingly enter conflict 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 offtopic.

Regarding troll-related conflicts, there are five groups into which users might be classified:

• Trolls are users who actively provoke conflict.
• Trollhunters (or Trollbaiters) behave according to a principle of "second strike". They do not initiate conflict, but escalate it once it begins. Often they use other trolls as an excuse for their own misbehavior, and in many cases, typecast a user as a "troll" regardless of his or her intent.
• Ignorers seek to ignore the conflict, continuing with the topic at-hand. They usually express a nonchalant disdain for the troll, but do not seek actively to insult him or her. They behave like elders, issuing simple words of wisdom such as "do not feed the trolls," or other phrases that generally mean the same thing: "ignore the troublemaker and he will give up and go away."
• Moderators (not in the same sense as a "system moderator") seek to resolve the conflict, making all parties happy, if possible.
• Bystanders withdraw from the conflict. In particularly bad cases, they will leave the forum in disgust.

In the "attention-seeking" cases, trolls seek the conflict provided by trollhunters, whereas in the "cry for help" cases, they seek the consolance and compassion offered by moderators.

Resolutions and alternatives

In general, popular 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 trollhunters (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 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 "IRL", 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 progessively more inflammatory until they get a response.

Usefulness of trolling

A major debate on the Internet is whether or not trolls perform any useful function. Because "troll" is such a broadly-applied term, if all definitions thereof are to be accepted, the answer must be non-definitively, "yes and no".

Users performing many useful, but controversial, functions are often decried as "trolls", and in these cases, so-called "trolling" may actually benefit the forum in which it occurs. For example, the presence of a radical and offensive right-winger described as a "troll" may allow a conservative "lurker" to feel more comfortable expressing 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 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.

Even though useful content and productive users are sometimes decried as "trolls", the general consensus is that pure "trolling"-- seeking conflict for its own sake-- benefits only the troll and trollhunters, and has no place in any forum. Most forums, including Wikipedia, reject the claim that pure and intentional trolling serves any useful purpose.

Related articles

Specific trolling subcultures

• Adequacy.org
• Slashdot trolling phenomena (see also Slashdot subculture)
• Usenet trolling phenomena
• m:Internet trolling phenomena on Wikipedia
• Troll organization
• Trollgnaws: alt.syntax.tactical, alt.fan.karl-malden.nose, Trolltalk, GameFAQs LUE

Notable troll examples

• Baiting
• Page widening
• Naked and Petrified

Miscellaneous

• Gadfly (social)
• AOLamer
• Breaching experiment
• Devil's Advocate
• Virtual community

External links

• alt.troll FAQ (how-to)
• Spiralix Troll FAQ
• alt.syntax.tactical FAQ
• afk-mn FAQ (mostly old-style Usenet trolling)
• What Makes A Fuckhead? by David Kendrick
• "Oh how I envy American students"
• "Oh how I envy American students"
• False repentance
• The relationship between social context cues and uninhibited verbal behavior in computer-mediated communication
• Moral panic and alternative identity construction in Usenet
• Searching for Safety Online: Managing "Trolling" in a Feminist Forum
• Troll entry in the Jargon File