Danger Blog 14: Trolls and You

“How can 3 million people watched this stream if theirs only 7 million people in the world, and half of those dont have internet?”

“I ahve a 100 word essay due next week, ugh i hate homework”

It’s a sucky, sucky part of life on the internet nowadays. “Trolling” is the intentional misleading of another person or group of people by way of the internet in order to achieve a certain reaction from said individual(s). If you have grown up on the internet, your experience dealing with trolls may vary, and if you’re comfortable with how you compose yourself you might as well stop reading now. The purpose of this week’s Danger Blog will be to help you identify situations of trolling in hopes you can save face in the future.

The reason behind why people troll can be a complicated question. Quite honestly it varies, and there are many degrees of “trollery” and the medium through which it is done has significant implications on how you can identify it. Some people troll because they’re bored, others enjoy the self satisfaction of “outsmarting” another person. There’s no “good” reason to do it, but it’s a part of life now, and in an age increasingly dominated by tech and the internet it’s worth talking about. Here are some things to remember when you think you might be fighting with just another troll:

Identification:

How do they present themselves initially?
Are they immediately contrary to things you are saying/doing?
Do they use a lot of emoticons? (This also varies from troll to troll, :3 :> 😮 are common trollish emoticons)
Are they aggressive?
Do they present grand/obviously incorrect statements (the world has 7 million people on it etc…)

Reflection: Know yourself.

Are you asserting something like an opinion has a popular counter-argument?

The first step should be to know yourself! If you’re going to argue anything in life you should probably know its counter-argument as well.

Dealing with it: Honestly whether you’ve identified your assailant as a troll or just a truly horrible person the best option is to ignore them.

For more veteran denizens of the web, counter-trolling is also an option, but taking this course requires two years of your time and $5,000 deposited to my PayPal (jk im trolling).

Hopefully the next time someone posts an outrageous claim on your favorite forum, or starts baiting you with a grossly overgeneralize or outrageous claim, you remember the above mentioned steps. I’ll end with this; not every troll is a terrible person. A lot of it boils down to how they’re operating and who they target, but going into further detail on that would, as mentioned above, require two years of your time and a $5,000 deposit to my PayPal. Internet secrets don’t come cheap, but I hope this can somewhat help you in the future!