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Why Trolls and Flames Happen
AnonymousHack writes "New Scientist examines why people are in general more rude and abusive online. 'Psychologically, we are "distant" from the person we're talking to and less focused on our own identity. As a result we're more prone to aggressive behavior' says one psychologist, who also cites research showing messages received by email are always perceived more negatively than on the phone." Just more proof for the Greater Internet F***wad Theory.
Ooh, more DISTANT. I hadn't thought of THAT before. Jesus Christ. Idiots.
--I'm so big, my sig has its own sig.
-- See?
There is a newsgroup, perhaps not too unlike many others, where a troll has taken up residence. He insults members and has found some method of posting every few minutes a lot of gibberish under various names and forged addresses.
This person is a degree or two off the usual troll who just likes to make some preposterous post and watch people take the bait and go. This one is actively trying to destroy the group with crap-flooding and there appears little members can do about it. There's also some halfwit posting MI5 crap across many newsgroups. Alas, Google News doesn't appear to allow filtering. Does reporting abuse every work?
Some newsgroups are still alive and thriving, but others seem to be losing regular posters to blog sites, I expect because they are freed from the harrassment of trolls, spammers and crapflooders by a moderator who will simply delete their garbage.
My ISP had a NEWS server, but shut it down for economic reasons and pointed out I could just use Google News. Feh.
I've given some thought over the weekend whether USENET can survive and whether anonymity also can survive. The more people abuse a system, the less eventual resistance there will be to the heavy hand of moderators or even government. I expect at some point bills requiring tagging and tracking of every email and every post on the internet being required by law with few people actually coming to the defence of anonymity, because they have had their own fill of trolls an crackers. It may come in on the wind of some means of fighting terrorism or protection of IP (a la RIAA & MPAA, among others) but it will encompass all.
Anonymous Cowards enjoy the present. I think the trolls are undermining us all and they really don't care if they lose anonymity and privacy, they're called trolls for a reason.
Lastly, no, this isn't a troll. Notice I didn't post anonymously. I am genuinely concerned about this as I lament the ills befalling open forms such as USENET and email.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Does this mean every flame and troll post in this thread will get modded +1 Insightful for demonstrating the principle of the article?
You were critically hit for no damage. The bruise will look nice, and maybe the scars will make good party talk.
This is all to be expected. "Civilaised society", whatever that means, comes from feedback. That feedback is significantly reduced by a computer interaction or by excessive alcohol etc. resulting in less inhibited behaviour online or when pissed.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I think that when you post to a forum, showing off a coin
for example, that when people post their opinion anything
negative is seen as a troll or a flame.
They go into the post thinking this is fun not realizing
that criticism should be welcome and can improve them as
a collector.
Or another person may simply not like their coin, see problems
with it they do not, or know they paid too high a price.
All this combined makes others think they are being negative
for no good reason and should have simply ignored the post
and moved on.
I disagree with these people who have thin skin and should
be happy they got honest feedback from someone who could
very well know much more then them.
Hey, as long as they do not use name-calling they should be
free to be as negative about the topic as they like. I find
i learn more from the negative comments that get discussed
then from the people who simply say, "nice coin" just to be nice.
But that's the real world viewpoint.
A bit over 20 years ago I found the first open and anonymous form of many I'd see, at college. Eventually I was hired on as a programmer and rewrote the system for greater capacity and enabling cursor animations in messages (it was pretty cool, honestly.) The thing that seemed to happen almost immediately, though, was flame wars (don't mention 'gun control') and some trolling. I think it is pretty simple human nature to speak more openly or play villain when there's a poor chance of getting caught. It was a bit different in those days, however, as we had system accounts and terminal lines, which made finding mean people a bit easier, if you were a fairly clever user.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This is not related just to the electronic age. If anyone has ever written a letter to you with some criticism (e.g. parental letter) It is usually a far more cutting communication than person to person. Phone communication is somewhere in the middle. I once had a work associate that I communicated with email (at first) almost exclusively. His notes were condescending, pontificating, degrading... without apparent purpose. He was somewhat better on the phone. Eventually when I dealt with him in person he was somewhat reasonable.
Use your head, can't you, use your head,
You're on earth, there's no cure for that - S. Beckett
My coworker sits right next to me. He's not distant at all, and still trolls every comment I post.
WTF? People are rude everywhere. Now don't get me wrong, dear reader. Of course I do not mean you, but the two idiots on either side of your cubicle, yes THEM, those hideous bastards and their soccer practicing spouses.
Clearly, this research team did all their research reading emails inside a nice warm coffee shop in Seattle, AND if you lift the rock off their heads, I'm betting both ears are flattened.
By the way, Flat Ear Syndrome (FES) has been diagnosed as affecting 1 in three research scientists by doctors at UCLA and WSU. Pfizer, working closely with the Bursars office of these highly respected institutes, has develope UnfesION, that relieves the symptoms of FES in 1 out of 16 patients with no dramatic side effects. Note: consult with your physician before taking UnfesION. Side effects may include; sudden outbreaks of common sense, clarity of vision, actual merit based grant funding, possible curricular related job opportunities, and possible respect among the greater community.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
I'd like to add: or be fired, yelled a by your wife, etc....
Commenting online is a why to vent anger at at shit you can't normally vent at. I've seen many comment here about how "stupid" their management or users are/is. And I bet, most of the time, folks wouldn't talk like that at work - but they do here. I think being online is a way to deal with aggression. In short, I'd rather have you folks flame me, or whatever, online than shoot me at work.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
This is in contrast to spoken communication, which is much easier to assimilate and can therefore go on for longer. It also contains more emotion than simple writing, so the actual words are less important than the intonation - which is almost completely missing from text.
People frequently mistake short comments for either sarcasm or impatience and this gives the impression that written communication (esp. in email, netnews) that the writer does not respect the audience.
I beleive this is incorrect, when I insult someone they will be left in no doubt they have been insulted. I think over time, most people will come to realise the difference between rudeness and terseness. There will always be a few however, who take exception at everything. there's no helping these individuals.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
+5 coins to you, sir! Well said.
I hope, when they die, cartoon characters have to answer for their sins.
There... that ought to do it.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Science has not yet discovered a way to transmit a punch across the Internet. Until such a time, people will continue to be rude because there are few if any consequences for their actions.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
>Recently there has been a sharp increase in the amount of abusive language on the New Scientist website.
Oh, how very fucking _interesting_! Sounds just like the kind of impartial, thoughtful introduction that heralds a fucking well-balanced scientific curio doesn't it? It's on an intellectual par with Schrödinger postulating about quantum mechanics because his damned cat wouldn't stop shitting on the carpet. Bra-fucking-vo.
>My pet theory about why people behave so rudely is that online commenting is treated, by most people, like a pub conversation
Oh yeah? Well _my_ pet theory is that you're fucking retarded. What's your local pub? The "make up spurious claims & expect people to be interested in them"?
>After being described a few weeks ago as "a self-lobotomised liberal who can't face the facts", I decided to look into the psychology of online behaviour a bit further.
You don't need a shitting psychology decree to know that's called fucking rampart narcissism, you self-interested jackass.
>Psychologically, we are "distant" from the person we're talking to and less focused on our own identity. As a result we're more prone to aggressive behaviour, he says.
Well that's fucking retarded, all I can think about when reading your mastabatory drivel is how awesome I am in comparison.
>Another factor influencing online communication, according to Epley, is simply the risk of miscommunication involved with text-based messages, which are inherently more ambiguous.
Nothing ambiguous about how much of a shit-eating moron you are, you must be a master of textual precision.
>Another obvious factor is that, if you insult someone online, it's unlikely you'll face any physical retaliation for it.
Look at brave Mr. New-Scientist-Blogger! People won't insult him in _real_ _life_ because if they do, he fucks their shit up for them! If he invents a way to stab people in the face over the internet, I'm in real fucking trouble.
>I'm not sure what we can do to minimise miscommunication and abuse online. But being aware that we're not as good at communication online as we'd like to think seems like a good start. I know I often have to restrain myself from joining in.
Didn't fucking restrain yourself hard enough did you? Didn't fucking restrain yourself hard enough, or I wouldn't be reading this peice of vomit you call an article.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
When I was at uni (bach maths sci degree) .. i took a 1st year course in psychology, mainly because I was young and single, and there were no hot chicks in the other mainline science subjects that I was already enrolled in (physics, stats, astronomy, chem and maths)
... psychology was interesting in as much as it made use of a lot of statistical analysis as a form of proof. However, the questions that Psychology was attempting to answer were as lame as dishwater, especially compared to the great unanswered riddles that one finds in, say, physics or maths.
.. before this greater internet fucktard theory was ever proven.
Whilst I was fascinated with the impossibly hard questions that my chosen fields of study were setting out to unravel and comprehend
And yet somehow, professional Psychology academics would manage to get substantial grants to go ahead and prove such theories as "If someone is smacked over the head every day for the next 5 years, then they are more likely to believe that they are going to get smacked over the head tomorrow - compared to someone who has never been smacked over the head at all". Such theories could be proven (at great expense mind you) using the most thorough and rigorous statistical analysis.
Woop Dee do.
I made a comment to the head of the Psych department that Psychology was nothing more than the vieled scientific study of the completely fucking obvious. My grades in this particular subject towards the end of that year reflect that fact as well. Some of the other students in my psych group who handed up almost verbatim copies of the same written work during the same period predictably fared better in their marks.
OK then, so now we find that you can take a normal person off the street, give them anonymity and an audience - and viola - without the constraints of dealing with people face to face, with no embarrassment to deal with, they tend to get obnoxious. And this is news ? The big question is - how many months of study, and how much grant money was sucked up in proving this most valuable theory ?
Its amazing that we ever managed to build the pyramids, discover mathematics, communicate wirelessly across the globe, understand the quantum states of the atom, put a man on the moon, or map out the human genome
Where would we be without Psychology ?
Utopiano is a trademark of Stallman enterprises.
don't you mean GNUtopiano!!
There's an even simpler explanation for why the Internet tends to be full of fucking idiots: kids. Young people, in real life, are generally ignored by adults who aren't specifically responsible for their care, and so most people don't realize that if you just listen to what they say, they're insufferable little pricks. But on the 'net, with anonymity added, these worthless little rugrats are suddenly on equal footing with adults. They go nuts with the power to insult people who would, in an actual meeting, ignore them entirely. And not knowing that they're arguing with a 12-year-old, the adults just think that the guy/gal on the other end is a total fuckwit, instead getting upset and unhappy as if they'd had an argument with another adult.
Next time you're dealing with some Internet troll, don't get angry. Just bring to your minds' eye the truth: it's a junior highschooler angry at his lack of power in his own life and taking it out on the Internet community. It's a lot less frustrating when you see it as kids being kids.
This, incidentally, is why I favor privacy, but not total anonymity. Either keep kids out of the online arena entirely or label them somehow; they bring down the maturity of the discussion as a whole.
These psychologists should just have read Penny Arcade.
In the real world, that would get you dropped
That's really not true though. I mean, if you track down a really macho belligerent guy and determinedly heckle him in front of his friends, maybe you'll evoke a violent response. But the vast majority of the time, when you insult or act offensively to a stranger you'll get one of two responses:
- They'll ignore you or otherwise try to avoid confrontation.
- They'll express anger or threaten you aggressively, but not follow through.
People always want to make you believe they're going to "kick your ass" when they're angry, and they may even half-believe it themselves. But people are actually rarely willing to be violent to a stranger for a trivial reason.
I think that perhaps the perceived threat is what matters though. Whether or not people will actually attack you for being rude in RL, it's a possibility we can imagine, and fear of that possibility might keep us in line.
And you were wrong. Nicely done.
Let me ask you a question Mr. I took a first-level psych course, so I know all I need to know. Why does someone who gets hit over the head every day for five years expect to get hit on the head tomorrow?
More importantly, and a tremendous demonstration of why you need to maybe take a second psych course, why does someone who gets hit over the head on random days have a MUCH STRONGER response than someone who gets hit every day?
They do. You didn't know that. And it's certainly not obvious.
Did it ever occur to you that the reason you found things so obvious is the lack of sophistication of your first level course?
You'd think that to someone as intelligent as you that would be... obvious.
There is only one chair and it's a +5 Chair of Throwing
The other chairs are a lie
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
When you get mod points you can also select "underrated" and "overrated" which just add or remove one from the current score without changing the modifier. So a post that starts at 2 and gets a one troll and four underrated mods will end up at (5, troll).
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
Do you have a contact person at MSFT I can send an invoice to if I abuse you on the Internet? How much would I get per insult?
E.g. if I called you a "paranoid basement dwelling wackjob with a chronic drug habbit" how much? I'm not of course, I want someone to show me the money first - why would they buy a cow if they can get the milk for free. What about a more complex, technically researched flame? Do they pay per hour?
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I think the fear of being bopped in the nose keeps otherwise obnoxious people from being overly obnoxious in public. If the worse somebody can do is flame you back, you are more willing to be verbally aggressive online. It is similar to how people, usually teens, who shout something rude at strangers from a passing car wouldn't do the same if standing 5 feet away. The same "hit and run" principle happens on the net.
Table-ized A.I.
We are operating under the basic assumption people who are assholes online are not assholes offline.
I see rudeness everywhere, not just the internet. From the tailgater on the highway, to the woman cutting me in line at the grocery store, to the teenager on her cell phone while I try and enjoy a movie, rudeness is everywhere. People make a big deal that credit card information on the internet will be used by hundreds of crooks within minutes, but do you really think if you laid your wallet down in a crowded shopping mall anything different would happen?
In short, this underlying belief that humanity's "asshole" bit is set to off by default just doesn't sit well with me.