Slashdot Mirror
Why Trolls Win With Toxic Comments
Hugh Pickens writes "The Web is a place for unlimited exchange of ideas. But according to an NPR report, researchers have found that rude comments on articles can change the way we interpret the news. 'It's a little bit like the Wild West. The trolls are winning,' says Dominique Brossard, co-author of the study on the so-called 'Nasty Effect.' Researchers worked with a science writer to construct a balanced news story on the pros and cons of nanotechnology, a topic chosen so that readers would have to make sense of a complicated issue with low familiarity. They then asked 1,183 subjects to review the blog post from a Canadian newspaper that discussed the water contamination risks of nanosilver particles and the antibacterial benefits. Half saw the story with polite comments, and the other half saw rude comments, like: 'If you don't see the benefits of using nanotechnology in these products, you're an idiot.' People that were exposed to the polite comments didn't change their views really about the issue covering the story, while the people that did see the rude comments became polarized — they became more against the technology that was covered in the story. Brossard says we need to have an anchor to make sense of complicated issues. 'And it seems that rudeness and incivility is used as a mental shortcut to make sense of those complicated issues.' Brossard says there's no quick fix for this issue (PDF), and while she thinks it's important to foster conversation through comments sections, every media organization has to figure out where to draw the line when comments get out of control. 'It's possible that the social norms in this brave new domain will change once more — with users shunning meanspirited attacks from posters hiding behind pseudonyms and cultivating civil debate instead,' writes Brossard. 'Until then, beware the nasty effect.'"
That's Why.
Not sure what kinds of forums they're talking about, but I'm pretty sure there isn't any trolling on any of the forums I post on.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The polarization is because of the left wing agenda pushed by Obama. You see it when the poor rise up and congratulate the new pope while simultaneously agreeing to farm subsidies for Monsanto
We have a winner!
Karma: Excellent. 15 moderator points expire sometime.
I don't know if anyone felt like this, but I remember in middle school being with a group of kids and as soon as someone said something nasty/ negative about an individual, everyone felt they had to agree and chime in. Whenever it was something positive, the responses were mostly neutral.
Now as a 30-something, I sense this "negative groupthink" with the younger coworkers, but with my peers we have disagreeing opinions. I know at least when I debate I try to see it from all angles, whereas people younger (and much older) than me seem to only have one point of view, and only theirs is the correct one. Or, it's easier to follow than to create your own set of opinions and facts to support it.
Does it begin with polarized news or comments that may correct/nullify the polarization of the news?
Certainly more and more people are realizing the News is polarized already.
TV ads have used anchoring for decades - "You won't pay $300, or $200, or $150 for this product, but it's yours today for 3 low payments of $29.99".
The first prices anchor your expectation, and $29 sounds like a great deal. Even those smart enough to mentally say "you mean $90" still come up with a 2-digit number instead of 3 digits, and it seems like a good deal.
Stores do this too. A slow-selling model will suddenly jump up in price when placed next to the product's big brother, at a higher price. The goal isn't to sell the more expensive product, it is to anchor your price to the smaller version seems like a deal.
When people have no idea what is going on, they need an anchor. This seems to be true of anything.
Automatic Master's thesis in any subject in advertising - take something advertisers have known for decades, make your thesis about how that applies to your field, and then do a study.
Advertisers have the financial incentive to know how people think, and the only problem is they stopped before generalizing into behavior patterns, and just made it about purchasing.
Strange how I still don't know the actual definition of 'troll' despite being on here for ages. It seems to have multiple definitions to suit whoever throws the comment out.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
If nice comments don't make you question the story (which is what this research determined), then perhaps trolling has a value. Any technology is going to have pros and cons. If nice comments don't change any opinions, then what is the point of them? And if trolls cause a more thorough discussion, then perhaps their damage is overrated.
Nonetheless, there is a strong value in moderating trolls when they become cliquish. Go read the comments in any jpost article to see an example.
I've never come across a news site that allowed "open" comments not become dominated by their inaneness.
Why do news sites allow them? I suppose there may be a connection between allowing them and traffic (I really don't know) - but I see highly serious, respectable local news outlets that already have a strong base suddenly decide "Hey, everyone's doing it, why not us?"
In ye old days we had "Letters to the Editor". Open comments are not a viable replacement. The former were heavily moderated.
Beetle B.
My favorite method requires a bit more work. I don't know if I've seen it done, but that is the point.
The method involves letting the person keep posting, but only they can see their posts after being flagged. That way they can keep thinking they are making noise and also not get any attention.
The study had the subjects read an article and the comments. I'm curious what effect rude comments have when noone reads the article, so we can better understand Slashdot.
Thank you very much for your time spent reading this, ladies and gentlemen.
The polarizing effect can even be a good one. When I see someone make a stupid attach I have a tendency to research the subject and become more informed. That is a good thing. Perhaps attacks make people learn more to defend their positions.
The changing of attitudes is more complex. Here are some possible reasons;
If people who can not carry on a polite debate in support or opposition of a technology perhaps their position is weak and they are trying to bully their way through. I would hesitate to support the same position as a troll.
Perhaps when people see negative speech they begin to think negatively bout everything and that manifests at negativity about the subject.
This too may be a research issue as more information may change the position.
This is true. But also, there is the problem of determining what/who is a troll. If you admin a forum, and especially if you are a media organisation, you should be aware that people will try to push their political message, and you should simply remove these comments if you cannot filter them before their arrival. In internet communities, sockpuppets are frowned upon, but it seems that the old media has not caught up yet, thus multiple trolls thrive.
Then there are idiots and rude people. A simple upvote/downvote system can keep that under control.
Also, threads. Threads are good because they contain/constrain the trolls who cannot effectively pollute large number of conversations (if they try, they will also "lose" large numbers of conversations, to the detriment of their "side".)
It's called "bully."
Don't get what you want? Throw a tantrum or take by force.
Few people agree with what you say? Be mean to them, belittle them, In public if possible. Bully them until a) they kick your ass or kill you, b) you *do* win them over, or 3) they stop listening to you.
This particular phenomenon isn't quite new. TV and Religion work much the same way. One blogger or poster or anchor or pastor or priest will say one thing, then an avalanche of people incapable of original, independent thought nod in assent. In order to rile the crowd, they will attack the person and ideas of those who "oppose" them. "Gee, if senator Juan Pingalarga is here in church agreeing with the pastor's bashing of gays, it must be ok! I'll bash gays too!" Tell me this isn't how it works. Tell me this isn't how we get these sickening political comments threads on CNN, etc. Tell me that's not how we get these fantastically bellicose flame wars here about win vs. unix, apple vs. android / samsung etc.
Tell me this isn't why America's rapidly slipping into irrelevance -- the smart and quiet ones constantly out-mouthed by the dumb and loud.
This starts at home and school, and the only way to buck it is to teach the little ones right, not trusting their education largely to TV or the Internet.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Clearly the submitter and editor had Slashdot uneasily perched in the backs of their minds as they put this one up.
Slashdot has moderators, which raises it above some over sites. However, the moderators are volunteers and tend to be young (most of them are under 30 is my guess). My experience is that with stories like nanotech where there is not widespread prior familiarity or strong opinions, the mods do a good job in trying to be evenhanded and modding up comments that raise an insightful or informative point, regardless of which side they are on. But in stories where the mods have a strong personal bias, that bias will be reflected in their evaluations, so we often see the following:
+5, Informative:
Die RIAA/MPAA! You slimy fuckers need to crawl back under a big rock and stay there!!!
while point by point rebuttals taking the anti-piracy side that clearly took several minutes to compose might be modded as "troll". It could be that the moderation itself on those types of posts is intended to be funny or ironic, but somehow that gets lost when every non-collapsed post takes the same side of the issue.
Slashdot would benefit if its moderators learned to be more evenhanded, even on stories where they have strong personal opinions.
Why do you think politicians use nasty vile language to trash their opponents? It delivers both (a) the message that they are better, and (b) reinforces that with a visceral reaction from their audience. The problem become when they then have to sit down and work out a solution to a problem - the previous reaction of the audience makes their compromise seem unacceptable. So what we have in a two-party system is a race to abandon the middle. Anyone trying to reduce the level of nastiness is attacked by their opponent as weak and unprincipled, and therefore is voted out of office, leading to a more and more splintered society.
It's called "hellbanning", and it's done in more places than you might think. You can even have the hellbanned trolls see the other hellbanned troll posts, giving them all a nice padded room to go nuts with Nerf.
The overall point is to stay away from comments since, at best, they change nothing?
In a world of the blind, the one-eyed man is king--and the two-eyed man is a heretic.
There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.
The problem becomes when you open up your comment system to the world et al. If you have a never-ending expansion of the number of accounts that can post, then you have a never-ending expansion of the number of posts to check for this kind of behavior and ban/remove accounts and/or posts. That gets expensive quickly, and for site that have a low profit margin to begin with (if they have any profit at all), this is a business-breaker.
Big mistake. The idea that any rude comment or any comment that you disagree with is a troll. Any clear view on a subject, any unpopular opinion is a troll.
I've been marked as a troll, for example, for my ideas regarding religion (I understand that religion is detrimental for modern humans, that teaching religion to children is a form of abuse, and therefore indoctrinating anyone under 18 should be illegal).
Truth is, regardless of what you think about my idea (please don't turn this into a religious discussion, I only used it as an example), that doesn't mean I'm trolling, it only means I have a radically different idea, and that yours and mine are incompatible, it doesn't mean I'm intentionally trying to upset you. If you are so sensitive, the problem lies with you, not with my comment.
Also, the idea that anything rude must be a troll. Rude comments win (if the underlying idea has any basis) because rude shows conviction, certainty. If I say "nanotechnology is a good idea, you should be more open-minded", I sound weak. If I say "Fuck this anti-science bullshit. We need to get rid of fear of technology, anyone that doesn't understand the benefits of nanotechnology after reading this article is a backwards idiot that has no place in modern society", I'm essentially saying the same fucking thing, but with different wording. This PC society we live in tells us we need to be nice to everybody. That is simply not truth, if you understand that something is simply wrong, and you are certain of your ideas, grow some fucking balls and express them in a way that is actually effective.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
... Which leads to topics like this where so many people post lulz-troll comments that you can't tell the difference between actual trolls and people just trying to be funny.
Aw, screw you guys!
It's called "hellbanning", and it's done in more places than you might think. You can even have the hellbanned trolls see the other hellbanned troll posts, giving them all a nice padded room to go nuts with Nerf.
So THAT's what those commentary sections on online news sites are for! Wait... What?
And the WELL stinks.
Circular fantasies about post-economic info-tech utopia.
You people were the usefull idiots who forged the tools for perpetual, universal surveillance and drone warfare.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
That's be censorship, friend. Defending against trolling will always be tougher than trolling itself, we need to accept it. The only way is to break down the troll's logic, which is fairly easy (and hold on to the hope that most people are intelligent, which is not easy)
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
...always crap anyway, so why read them at all?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
This is true. But also, there is the problem of determining what/who is a troll.
The real destroyers of the discussion aren't usually strictly speaking trolls, they're people with an extreme black-and-white point of view who'll attack anyone with a dissenting opinion with the intensity of a pit bull with rabies. They're often met by their equal and opposite and together they'll churn out 100 posts drowning out any discussion by anyone with the slightest hint of seeing both sides of the argument.
For example on our largest newspaper's discussion pages on any page related to immigration or that could possibly framed in reference to immigration (employment = immigrants stealing our work etc.) we'd have the ex-leader of a white supremacist party ranting and raving, all within freedom of speech but what's the point of trying to have a discussion with him? I think they got 200 votes at the election so they represent some 0.00...% of the population, but he sure can take up a lot of online space. And their opposites are those who want to open all borders, let all cultures and people blend and afterwards we'll all sing kumbayah and be one big happy family, nothing could possibly go wrong with importing dark age attitudes and Sharia law or completely extinguishing our national identity.
Or on any article about our version of the CPS there's a guy who clearly is on a crusade against them, half the time he claims they're mad with power and just like to crush families, twist lies and abuse their power, the other half he's trying to make them part of a feminist conspiracy that will always side with the mother no matter what. No points for guessing what his experience with them is, though he never mentions that only uses a lot of pseudoscience and worthless studies that claim the same as him. I could on, but for every subject there seems to be a few people with an ax to grind who just won't shut up. It's practically the online variety of filibustering.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Being able to use 'technology' like ipads fools our less educated citizens into believing their are actually quite bright, and in no further need of education or self reflection.
Haven't you looked at the stats on an ipad? +20 int, +20 status, last I checked.
One name I have heard for this strategy is a "shadow ban"
I am an ACCA student. Got a query on Accountancy/Finance? Maybe I can help!
Everyone post "nasty" comments - rude and abrupt, whether you're arguing for or against the premise of the article.
Then tomorrow when it gets posted as a dupe, everyone post constructive comments, and we'll see what happens.
Not that slashdot is an island of perfection it has a pretty good BS filter, one of the best troll filters, and potentially one of the best off-topic filters. So if there is an article on black holes and someone starts ranting about 911 conspiracies they end up with a -1 pretty damn quick. If someone posts their slightly strange theory on black holes they may or may not survive but probably won't get a 5 and if someone goes half off-topic but against the grain of slashdotters and says blackholes are just a theory and the bible has a better answer they too will get badly spanked.
Where self moderating groups like slashdot and reddit can go wrong is when you violate a cultural taboo. Saying valid good things about Microsoft or valid bad things about Linux will get you a karmic black eye and on reddit not being racist will get you in trouble in many sub sections. Yet reddit is pretty good at sorting out fact from fiction (compared to many news organizations' comments sections).
The quality of many news organizations' comments moderation is best shown by the number of spam/completely bonkers comments that they let survive.
On a side note I am not happy with the number of organizations using Discus (I have hosts blocked them). I had an experience with one of their people and man o man do they seem to gather data.
Rudeness or politeness are essentially orthogonal to addressing the topic under discussion, as the topic can be addressed using either form. However, rudeness can mask lack of substance in a comment, because the crude words act as a magnet or decoy to divert attention away from poor logic. While it may not be totally accurate to call this use of rudeness "trolling" because its purpose is not to bait, nevertheless it constitutes logical entrapment or derailing, which is similar.
This is why rudeness should be shunned (or moderated away) in forums that intend to provide effective logical discourse.
This is true. Which is why, for all its flaws, I suspect the slashdot solution is the best-ish you can get. It is not perfect, and perhaps a slightly more fine-grained solution to points would be nice (for example, getting+1 would require 1 moderator giving you a point, +2 two mods, and so on).
But in general moderator aversion to shills helps a lot: to give an example, if you read the Guardian, whenever there is a subject remotely connected to the EU, a horde of people are there to spew general nonsense, and they will repeat the same false points again and again. Except there simply are not that many people who care that much and I suspect that this is an organised ploy which is meant to push a particular political agenda. Same thing for nuclear, or any topic where there is a very vocal minority who has an agenda.
I realise this is all conspiracy-theory sounding, but it is a documented truth that activists groups of all sides do that, and to me, when you are a respected news organisation, it falls within your duties to police the trolls.
If you join a discussion, never ever use arguments! It suggests that your position is not as clear and widely accepted as you think it is and provides your opponent with something to attack! Its far more efficient to dismiss his claim with a witty one-liner and a derogatory "bah" *thumb down*.
It's a brilliant, almost tit for tat response to actual trolls who do it just to spread evil and waste other people's time. It is pretty devastating if it's used for other commenters, who maybe just have a provocative writing style or unpopular views. I hope it's being used with great caution
Why assume that polarization is bad? Merely because the underlying story is complex (far moreso than ever presented in any media) does not mean it deserves attention. Sure, the original authors might think so, many people do not care.
Worse (from the zealots PoV), people have an absolute right to choose not to care. For these people, perhaps polarization is an acceptable shortcut. The do seem to choose it.
FUCK YOU! Your stupid fucking theories are fucking STUPID! Anybody who lets god damned TROLLS direct the traffic in their little fucking teeny-tiny brains is a fucking MORON. And YOU'RE a moron for writing this stupid, fucking, DRIVEL. ... There!
Now, the effects described in the article will be effectively canceled out by the direction of my negative comments against the theory. People will no longer be swayed by trolls. Talk about short-cuts! You fucking idiot!
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
You think that could happen? Is there a site like that?
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
10% of people have an opinion, and the rest are lazy and just pick one of those rather then think about there own stance....sounds about right.
In some certain circumstances enemies don't cost you anything and friends get you some small benefit
One example would be a deep Red (or Blue) district politician who acts like trolls and makes as many enemies as friends. But his friends are in his/her district enemies are outside, so he does not care.
Or even an obnoxious car salesman advertising in radio "Costoria Buick! Owner Ed has gone mad! He is stackin' 'em deep, selling 'em cheap"!. Yeah, that guy is irritating, but you might still remember the name of the dealership, and the irritated millions do not bother him. The few sales leads that he does get is enough for Ed Costoria.
So I don't see the internet trolls as winners, but the sites hosting them as losers.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Pseudonyms and rude behavior are separable issues, and should be treated as such. Rude behavior can be addressed with moderation (and should be.)
Pseudonyms are important for a number of reasons, including protection from stalkers, rouge governments (but I repeat myself), troll shadowing, bullying, ex-(wives|husbands|jackbooted thugs|etc), revolutionary ideas that step on other people's turf, or could, critical political commentary, and, oh yes, privacy, should one desire that.
The fact that pseudonyms are the first layer for many trolls is irrelevant if moderation is adequate. And that, in turn, can be addressed in many ways. Slashdot, for instance, reduces visibility of trolls by rare (unfortunately) moderation. Other sites let the users detect and suppress the trolls; that kills trolls faster, but it also kills contrary ideas and that's not good.
So it seems to me that the most important thing here is to get moderation up to the highest possible standard. When you run a site, after all, it's your barbecue... you should get right in there and see that the level of discourse you want is maintained. If you don't, it's your fault. Don't blame the pseudonymous folks for your failings.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Would the moderator on crack please let me know what the hell in that can be construed as "Flamebait"? The only opinion of my own I offered was:
The real destroyers of the discussion aren't usually strictly speaking trolls, they're people with an extreme black-and-white point of view who'll attack anyone with a dissenting opinion with the intensity of a pit bull with rabies. They're often met by their equal and opposite and together they'll churn out 100 posts drowning out any discussion by anyone with the slightest hint of seeing both sides of the argument.
The rest of the post are actual examples from reality I've run into who have been drowning out discussion elsewhere, if that's flamebait to you well then take your problem up with reality.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Jon Stewart pointed this out once when he noted that, "no Congressman ever got ahead by jumping on his desk and yelling 'be reasonable!'"
"You suck" is much more powerful than "me, too."
John
There's nothing that makes me think about the plight of the LGBT community more than seeing the loonies from the Westboro Baptist Church screeching about them. Same with neo-Nazi groups, anti-immigrant activists and others.
Have gnu, will travel.
So it's not about trolls "winning" in terms of successfully persuading people, but only in terms of successfully destroying any chance of a reasonable debate.
And that's what they win. Solutions to problems are more likely to be formulated by people in the middle of the road or those willing to accept a compromise position. People at the far edges of an issue aren't likely to compromise or change their views. So if one side or the other perceives some interest of theirs to be close to a settlement not in their interest, they pile on and drive the pragmatic people away.
There's another effect at work as well. Gladwell addressed it in his book, Blink. Once can program people to subconsciously adopt a certain perception of someone or something by repeating propaganda. Even when consciously people know the statements are untrue.
Have gnu, will travel.
Made an actual effort to let us report troll comments and fucking remove them.
Hi Bill,
you still destroying America?
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Thomas' Corallary to Godwin's Law.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
well, the Economist has an article about how reasonability or civility is exactly the succesful political trait in Sweden and 'Scandinavia'.
The polarization is because of the left wing agenda pushed by Obama. You see it when the poor rise up and congratulate the new pope while simultaneously agreeing to farm subsidies for Monsanto
We have a winner!
Yeah, this stuff sounds like it was generated by a "troll" generator, similar to the old buzzword generators.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
As bad as I've always found the internet to be, as a whole, I never realized how tame and timid it truly was until the idea of attaching shitty third-party discussion thread services all over the place started catching on. You know what I'm talking about -- Facebook comment widgets (where people actually attach their real name to some of the most vile idiocy I've ever read) and inline Disqus forums. You find these instances every time you read the comments under an article on a CBS affiliate station's website or -- predictably -- to any page on the internet that has a comment section and has been linked to by DrudgeReport. This is where you find people who have 50,000 posts to their name, commenting on every single article or thread ever found. Spewing the same moronic drivel with references to "Obozo" and "Oh, notice the libtards that have corrupted the media wont' publish the race of the criminal in this news story, because it's probably a [insert non-white skin color, here]".
Fortunately, these little honey-pots keep these idiots occupied and way from the rest of us. All you have to do is set your browser to block all facebook, disqus and other widgets and your life is much better. Let the pigs fester in their own shit.
What a dumb article how exactly are they winning? Oh by making you write this dumb article about them. What next? An article by you talking about how the "welfare queens" are winning by taking government handouts. Sorry but much like the trolls, if your a black welfare queen you ain't winning.
To the villifier go the spoils. The first to call the opposition Nazis or some equally inflammatory term captures the hearts and minds of the readers. Only an idiot would think otherwise.
mob-ocratic
Stop fucking saying that you uneducated idiot. The word is `` ochlocracy''. Stop using stupid neologism and pick up a god damn book.
In ye old days there was a specific amount of space available for letters to the editor; usually about half a page.
There is still a limit even today: the patience of the reader. Just because you can publish every comment on an article does not mean that you should. I rarely do more than glance at the comments on news sites because they are full of drivel. They could at least select the one or two sensible comments and have the rest accessible by a link if anyone wants to bother reading them.
Spend time at Alternet or Huffington Post or DKos and they're hypermoderating like none other while shouting about how they love free speech. Free speech as long as it agrees lockstep with them that is.
They confuse the two. If you dare question the doctrine of the 98% majority of any website you are immediately censored for 'trolling'
You know, nostalgia is not the same nowadays as it was back then.
I also remember when the troll was conceived as a person who plays a game of intellectual manipulation to triumph in argument; usually, the troll's does not adhere to the views he expresses. But the features of trolling were often sophistry (for the serious troll), fallacies (for the trolls who don't know better), but most impotantly, the necessary feature is a polemic (i.e. argumet). These weren't flame wars and did not appear as such, and between usenet and oldschool web forum communities a good troll could keep it up for days, weeks, even months. Most often the troll is outed after someone discovers the user in concurrent or prior participation in other troll-like threads there and elsewhere (trolls often used the same handles and accounts across sites and services). These people I am now forced to call Original Trolls, or OT, to distinguish from what people call trolls now. Sure, some nominal trolls pulled off similar pranks, like the markov text people, always good for a chuckle.
But then came the forum ninjas, those guys who start off as OT's might - with sincere comments - and quickly abandon the discussions they've started. But then someone started calling these people trolls, and then it was open season: You were a troll if you caused any kind of dischord, intended or not. How many times have we seen a thread start out innocent enough, only to go up in flames, and people almost always accuse the OP instead of the person in the thread who lit the matches? Yea, people really don't care to be discerning about who is a troll these days.
The worst kind of troll, if you ask me, is the troll crier. This is the user who casually labels other users as a troll, without justification. And once the name sticks, it is hard to shake, as there is no recourse for the accused to defend himself as not a troll. Meanwhile the troll crier, like one who cries witch, can point to anything as evidence for his claim. Bad crops means a witch, right? So what makes a troll? Anything, the troll crier doesn't even care, not that he needs to prove his point. And that's just the kind of thing a troll might do. Hmm. Something to think about the next time you find yourself dismissing users because of your local troll crier.
How are news sites paid? Advertising. How much you get paid for a specific ad depends upon how many people click on it. If you want to sell lots of advertising it helps to have lots of page views. Think about this, a troll posts an idiotic comment, say 90 percent of the comments made about President Obama over the last five years or 99 percent of anything coming out of the mouths of Republicans or their buttboys, the Libertarians. Other readers jump on the troll and tell him what a fucking idiot he is, and every time they do so it counts as a page view. Sure, it's sleazy and contemptible, but it brings in the bucks the way that the old "letters to the editor" section of your local newspaper ever did, and if there's anything that the advent of the internet has done it's completely kick the shit out of the advertising supported content model used by newspapers, radio and television.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
NEEDZ MOAR HITLER!
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
I'll probably get hate for saying it but fuck it, its the truth, Slashdot has REALLY gone downhill since they sold it. We used to have epic threads about subjects like file systems and dark matter and you would often get experts in the field to debate with. Hell I've have argued about different OS designs with some of the guys that were building the bloody things and even when you got schooled you frankly learned something.
It's obviously a sign that 2013 is the year of Linux on the desktop.
"Slashdot has REALLY gone downhill since they sold it .. if I find me another site that actually talks geek tech and has a decent community I'll be happy to join them"
I totally agree, I also find the choice of submissions, and what they don't choose, most curious and baffling. I too weary of finding a decent geek tech site.
AccountKiller
"Then they find out the truth, & then only to have their b.s. blow up in their FACES once a Linux started getting used (most used = most attacked, period) - & nothing shows THAT, better than ANDROID on smartphones"
Do you mean malware targeted to Android, which does not impact the technical aspects of the linux platform.
AccountKiller
I hope it's being used with great caution
Considering that the only place that I have heard of using it, was Somethingawful, that's a very unlikely thing to happen.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
actual trolls who do it just to spread evil
You have a very low standard for evil if being an annoying twat qualifies.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
So if someone is modded troll, it's a positive thing? It indicates the person is influencing society? Cool.
Look, if you love something and want to rave about it online you just end up looking like a douche or even worse, a shill:
"Oh, I just bought this amazing cracker from Kraft and it tastes so awesome and buttery but OMFG I can't believe its only 20 calories for 20 of them!!!. 5 yummy stars but I really wish I could make it 10!!!!"
Instead, this gets far more traction and respect:
"Everyone at Kraft must die from a plague of putrid boils for creating a cracker that tastes like sawdust that was farted out of a Keebler elf's asshole after running a marathon."
The only exception of content that is annoyingly positive all the time is the iTunes music reviews because it is a community of douches trying to out douche each other raving about their favorite artists. First, you can't review something unless you buy it so its stupid to buy something to talk about how much it sucks. Second, if you buy music from an artist then you are already a fanboy so you are going to give it a glowing review in spite of it sounding like a bunch of cat's in heat being banged on drums covered in sandpaper. iTunes music reviews are completely irrelevant because by design it's a self perpetuating shower of douche wash.
It's Monday, I'm in a mood.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Years back... I mean decades ago (now I feel old), there was a text-only "game" for the Atari called Abuse. The computer would spout insults at you and you would type insults right back. There was no scoring or "winning", the game lasted until you shut off the program. I quickly found that I didn't have a big talent for tossing insults, but I did come upon a tactic that seemed to "infuriate" the computer. I'd type kind statements into it. The program would keep upping its game, becoming more and more "frustrated" that I wasn't responding in kind.
It almost makes me wonder if some trolls could be defeated in this manner. Trolls who come into a forum looking to generate waves of angry responses, but who are met with kind remarks instead might get frustrated and leave. NOTE: You don't need to agree with the troll's view. Just express your disagreement in a nice manner. Don't give them the reaction they are looking for.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
On vBulletin forums (I used to administer a bunch) the option was called "Tachy goes to Coventry"
One of the things I actually liked about Facebook was the option to remove posts (from others' view). If you got some insulting retard, you could just extricate yourself from the conversation and there'd be a thread with him basically talking to himself.
I once commented on a female friend's post, and her overly-jealous (and not too bright) then-BF started flaming me. I removed my post and suddenly his flame is attached to her posts. Good times :-)