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Disarm Internet Trolls, Gently
Shlomi Fish writes "The best way to react to people trolling on Internet forums is not to feed them, right? Wrong! 'Don't feed the trolls' is also usually ineffective. Luckily, however, there is more effective approach, inspired by the book Feeling Good by David D. Burns."
That anus is impressively enlarged. Thank you for sharing it with us. What made you first think about posting it on slashdot?
You suck!...
Kinda...
Eh, actually you're not so bad...
In fact you're kinda cute...
Wanna go out tomorrow night?...
Nervous?.. Yeah, a little
First time?... No, I've been nervous lots of times
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
An accord? Now that's a gay car -- and it's the kinda car Hitler would drive if he were around today.
... develop a strong sense of self-worth & recognise that someone throwing profanities at you who has never met you is entirely unimportant.
Get over that, then you can have fun baiting them, reeling them in, playing with them a while, then throwing them back when you're bored.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
The author seems to be using "troll" as a term for "someone posting in an inflammatory manner," but I thought "troll" specifically referred to posters doing it to get a rise out of people. Responding in a reasonable manner isn't going to help if the other party isn't interested in taking the conversation seriously.
We accept you here, no matter your orientation...
Oh that's right! Go after the Asians!
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
1. What do you mean by feeding the trolls? I'm sure you don't really want them to starve to death.
2. I agree with you that it is difficult to have to put up with trolls. I hope, however, that the inner-tubes are big enough for everyone; maybe we can work together to find a nice bridge for the trolls to live under. It may seem a bit harsh, but if we fed them a few goats now and again, maybe they will feel better about themselves and move on to greener pastures.
3. If we can keep the trolls from offending us, then cyber-area can benefit from the diversity. I saw a documentary once where even an Ogre - I know they are different from trolls, but they share some common disagreeable characteristics - befriended a donkey, and they seemed to have a genuinely witty banter and joie de vivre. I read in the newspaper that the Ogre recently even married; so there is some possibility we can live together.
yeah, I guess it kinda works.
Trolls have been around for as long as individuals have been communicating online. From what I understand, they're essentially lonely, attention seeking people. Even if you do engage one in dialog, what then? All you're doing is feeding their addiction. There are just too many of them to warrant trying to help them all (and trying that may point to bugs in your own personality, too)
No, the best course is to killfile them or use whatever options your forum implementation has to achieve the same results. You don't raise your signal to noise ratio by trying to negotiate with the noise, you just filter it out and try to make sense of what remains.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Can we go back to the Usenet definition? Please? It referred to a specific new phenomenon (mostly) unique to online conversation, which was desperately in need of a name. And the name made sense: when you're trolling you're dragging bait through the water hoping some sucker will take a bite.
The word "troll" doesn't make sense when applied to hostile posters, and we already have lots of good words for people who are overly confrontational in conversation. "Asshole" and "dick", for a start.
You want to know what I miss? (shut up, of course you do!) I miss when /. had really good trolls. Remember them? The ones that took pride in their trolling? The ones that would spend all day cooking up offensive ASCII art or writing a shit eater or ass rape troll that like a fine novel didn't give away its true intention until nearly the end?
Man we used to have some damned fine trolling here, not the lame "Nigger nigger faggot faggot" crap spewed from Halo fratboys on 4chan and Digg, no trolls that were PROUD to be trolls and took pride in their work. Even our crazies were a cut above the rest, folks like Twitter that could spin a dozen sockpuppets into one giant conspiracy fueled fantasy around MSFT and the Illuminati. Now THAT was some damned fine trolling!
Sadly now our trolls are as cheap and badly made as a Chinese knockoff iPod, just no pride in the work anymore. Even our crazies have lost their flair,like MichaelK with his endless copies of his name with a number after it just so he can type "pathetic" and have it not at -1, or the HOSTS guy that capitalizes every other word like that makes his crazy more powerful or something, just no subtlety or finesse at all.
I'm sure the great trolls of the past are looking down from under their bridge in the sky and hanging their heads in shame. Oh and of course trying to shake their dicks at us, but unlike the lousy trolls of today they have a chorus line going with all the wieners having tassels and spinning in time like the pasties on a Vegas showgirl. Its all in the presentation you see, something the trolls of today just don't get. Personally I blame reality programming and MTV.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.