From: Bill Palmer (wilhelp@ix.netcom.com)
Subject: To Catch a Troll...
Newsgroups: misc.writing
Date: 1999/06/30
...
To Catch a Troll...
Last month a poster in misc.writing made a remark
that started me thinking about some matters I would
now — with your kind patience — like to share with you.
Essentially, the person did not seem to enjoy
what I observed in my misc.writing-posted article,
“Close Encounter with Punctuation Bigot”.
Unfortunately, my attacker was not at all forth-
right about challenging any of my assertions in
that article.
Instead of troubling himself with attempting
a reasoned refutation of my assertions, he posted
some peevish remarks directed at me as a person
rather than at the many ideas in my article.
In the course of his unfriendly comments, he said
something that made it clear he was accusing me of
being a troll. In fact, he actually used the term
“troll” as he did this.
That's right. Me, Bill Palmer, “a troll”!
The person who has posted over 6,000 articles,
most by far to generally appropriate newsgroup
forums and has done so proudly under his own name
every time.
The net writer who has generated follow-up from many
thousands of DIFFERENT readers and who has written a
significant percentage of the best known original Usenet
articles of the past few years.
The proud owner of “Dejamountain”, the only personal
archive famous by its own name.
My critic's style of unjust name-calling bothers me
because it smacks of witch hunting, certainly so when
we throw all reason out the window and start applying
vague criteria defining “trolls” and “trolling” to
suit our own whims by unfairly branding someone who
rubs our nose out joint with his or her controversial
(but on-topic) articles.
Further, a few months back when I posted another
original article in a different newsgroup someone
did in fact call me a troll then too. I thought
at the time that the epithet was incredibly
unreasonable and I still think that.
Anyway, letting bygones be bygones, let's examine
what “troll” in fact means in our newsgroup culture.
In the first place “troll” can mean different
things to different people, and I can respect
each person's right to his own meaning.
The universally-respected Usenet expert Professor
Chudov, for instance, makes it plain he believes
in a sort of “productive (my own term trying to
sum up what I have read by him) trolling”, where
the troll generates entertaining or amusing follow-
up for the intellectual and/or amusement benefit
of the entire newsgroup by gently (or not so
gently) tweaking beaks now and then with thought-
provoking postings.
However, since the word was used against me in the
negative sense that so many posters seem today to favor,
I will focus primarily on that sort of troll here: our
“infamous Usenet pest” kind of troll, as opposed to the
“newsgroup gadfly” who uses actual wit for stirring up
productive or merely amusing posted reactions from
newsgroup readers.
A troll in the negative sense is simply a person who
will do anything for attention.
The aim of such a troll is not to entertain or enlighten
readers, but to have the troll's existence validated
by any sort of response at all.
A troll in this same pejorative sense is by nature
insincere, too.
Such a “Usenet critter” will generally post what will get
the most replies, and not post expressions of ideas and
sentiments the troll actually believes in.
This variety of troll has no pride in writing or thought
quality either.
Rather, the only goal for our pesky sort of troll is to
make the readers aware — and stay aware — of the troll's
shabby net-existence.
As you know by now, then, I view this kind of troll as
simply but an attention-starved misfit who craves any
sort of attention, no matter how unfavorable.
While there are “trolling newsgroups” and while
the net is a big place, I feel that ninety-nine-
point-nine percent of all Usenet groups, at least,
would be far better off without the sort of troll
I describe above.
On the other hand, we never want to get into a witch
hunting frame of mine regarding trolls.
We must have sensible criteria to apply, if we
wish to be at all fair.
I have, in fact, encountered newsgroup situations
where anyone who comes into a group and posts
*ON*-topic material that does conform to what the
more active and often aggressive members of the
group deem to be “okay” will be branded a troll.
To help avoid unfair application of the word
troll in its highly-negative sense, then, let's
work together toward encouraging some sort of just —
and practicable — method for determining who is
or is not likely a non-productive Usenet troll.
Here is what I suggest regarding questions to be
asked — and honestly and reasonably answered — of
any troll suspected of merely trying to get
attention by stirring up mischief:
1) Are the suspected troll's posts mostly or entirely
OFF-topic?
(*ON*-topic being defined in a fair way, of course,
such as inquiring sincerely if any reasonable person
was likely to agree that the material in question
was close to being on-topic in the newsgroup where
it was posted.)
2) Did the suspected troll come into the newsgroup
posting vicious personal attacks having nothing
to do with the newsgroup topic?
3) Does the suspected troll FOLLOW UP on-topic articles
by others with personal assaults having nothing to
do with the things being discussed on a thread?
The notorious Palmer's Parasites are very big
on this. They claim a rather peculiar license for
following up any ON-topic article of mine with
slimy, OFF-topic attacks having nothing at all to
do with a newsgroup subject OR an ongoing thread
discussion.
I make no apology for Palmer's Parasites, anymore
than I would “apologize” for a gang of muggers who
assaulted me at an ATM. People are responsible for
THEIR OWN postings. The Palmer's Parasites should
therefore be immediately run out of any non-flaming
group where they post off-topic rubbish, in my view.
Of course, Palmer's Parasites are naturally
trolls, too, which is why I mention them, but when
the trolling becomes so personal that you get a half-
dozen or so human parasites netstalking a net writer
through Dejanews and flooding serious newsgroups
with off-topic personal attacks, you have trolling
in its ugliest and most vicious form.
In a way, you can call these aggressive, trolling
parasites one of the prices of great success as a net
writer. You reach a certain degree of popularity, and
they start crawling out of the woodwork after you.
Even so, that sort of “netstalking troll” is unusually
reprehensible and I suspect most Usenet users loathe
them fully as much as I do.
4) Does the person crosspost from your group to the
flaming newsgroups?
Trolls love to crosspost between serious newsgroups
and flaming/amusement newsgroups because they view
their goal as one of causing annoyance, and they
know that if they can suck additional off-topic posts
into the target newsgroup, the “annoyance factor”
increases proportionally as new trolls crosspost
their rubbish to the non-flaming group targeted.
5) Are the person's posts poorly-written and generally
quite skimpy in — or entirely devoid of — intelligent
content?
Trolls take pride in getting ANY sort of
reaction, good, bad or wrathful. Development
of a writing style to be proud of, then, has
little to do with to with a troll's raison d'etre.
After all, when they drive away enough newsgroup
readers with their drivel, they simply pop up
with a new moniker and start over.
Most parasiteical (netstalking) trolls specialize
in the “snip and drool” follow-up, which means they
favor splashing puerile insults after every few lines
written by the poster targeted.
This snipping-and-drooling behavior is “writing” on
the cheap, involving reposting the trolls' (current)
names while saying nothing entertaining that a naughty
computer-literate sixth-grader could not have said better.
You have seen quite a few of the parasitical trolls pop
up in misc.writing, with no inhibitions at all about
the rubbish they post. (How “brave” people get while
hiding behind phony names!)
The “parasitial”-type trolls’ purpose involves
annoying all, while associating themselves in the
readers’ minds with the writer/target. As a result,
actually posting anything that is intelligent,
well-expressed or original has nothing to do with
the aims of the “Here I am again and ain't I cute?”
snip-and-drool assault by the parasitical troll.
6) Does the suspected troll post under a phony name?
Now, I am not suggesting pseudonyms are
wrong, but in general trolls will use false
names because, as I mentioned above, people
soon catch on to trolls and stop reading
their posts. When trolls of this sort feel
have driven off most of their readers, they
change their names again, and of course the
false name using makes them “braver” about the
ugly, malodorous slime many of them flood the
net with, too.
Even so, I defend everyone's RIGHT to post
under pseudonyms, and I don't want that
misunderstood. But allowing that all
people have the RIGHT to do something in
no way makes the lowly behavior of a few
(who are exercising the right only for
mischievious purposes) suddenly admirable.
Okay, think of someone you suspect of being a
troll. Ask yourself how many affirmatives
you get to the above questions when you are
trying to be completely unbiased in your
responses.
If the person is indeed a troll, you will have
likely answered YES to most or all of those
questions above.
Examining the matter from a slightly different
viewpoint now, I might add that there is nothing at
all wrong with a poster's wanting to get lots of
intelligent feedback to his or her articles.
I say that because I have read posts by people
who seem to insinuate that if you generate a good
deal of interesting follow-up, you are a troll
per se.
That notion boggles the mind for its silliness.
In reality, one test (and I don't suggest it's the
ONLY one) of any poster's standing in the intellectual
portion of the Usenet community involves the question
of how many original, on-topic stand-alone articles
generating lots of interesting follow-up the person
has posted.
A true Usenet intellectual is by nature a thread
starter.
A Usenet genius, then, would have to be the genius
of thread-starting, would have to be someone proving
capable of starting thousands of successful threads —
not with “Star Wars sucks” trolls, of course, but
with original articles containing unique, fully-
realized ideas that can challenge or otherwise
inspire others to post creative or informative
thread-responses in their turn.
That's not trolling, at least to the extent the term
represents activities now causing unneeded annoyance
in so many Usenet newsgroups.
I can't imagine a nuttier, topsy-turvyier state of
affairs than what we would have in Usenet if posters
had to hesitate before clicking “send”, thinking,
“Gee, I hope a lot of people DON'T follow me up
on the article I'm posting — someone might think I
am a troll.” (We are to imagine the speaker
shuddering and wringing his or her hands.)
After all, the best of Usenet has a lot to
do with DISCUSSION, and discussion does not
occur when we have a state of affairs where
people simply post their own ideas and that's
the end of the matter.
Discussion means give and take, and at best that's
“give and take” leading somewhere productive in the
intellectual or the creative sense, not a very brief
series of curt, unresponded-to statements going nowhere.
Let's leave the “You had your say and I had my say so
let's drop it” stuff to those who make no pretense at
all of having even a slightly above-average command of
the English language.
Frankly, and I say this only in the “if the shoe fits
wear it” vein, if you want to impress others as being
a person of few words, I think you can make a far
better impression in a auto repair shop than in a
Usenet writing group.
As a Usenet poster, one of the things that makes
me proudest occurs when I post an original article
that garners plenty of entertaining and/or informative
feedback.
And believe me, I don't define “good feedback” as
being something that compliments me personally or
even agrees with anything at all I assert in my
article.
Good feedback consists of interesting, reasonably
well-expressed, somewhat-original thoughts. That's
all, and I feel that almost everyone in Usenet has
the capacity to add worthwhile follow-up remarks,
if inspired by others to do so.
When this newsgroup thing works the way it's supposed
to, I call it “swimming in the thoughtstream.” I love
being a part of it.
Getting back to trolls, though, let's apply the
above sensible criteria before we accuse.
Let's not cry troll when someone rubs us the wrong
way with on-topic opinions, either.
Finally, I would ask something of every reader,
including the person in who so rudely accosted me
last month screaming “Troll!” upon being upset by
the frank, on-topic views I posted in misc.writing:
Let's not start throwing people in a pond and saying
if they float they are a troll and if they sink they
are not a troll.
Let's use reasonable criteria understandable and
applicable to all, newbies as well as “oldbies”.
You now have such criteria, so feel free to use them.
Fair enough?
Bill Palmer
alt.genius.bill-palmer