Slashdot Mirror
Psychologists: Internet Trolls Are Narcissistic, Psychopathic, and Sadistic
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Chris Mooney reports at Slate that research conducted by Erin Buckels of the University of Manitoba confirmed that people who engage in internet trolling are characterized by personality traits that fall in the so-called Dark Tetrad: Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), narcissism (egotism and self-obsession), psychopathy (the lack of remorse and empathy), and sadism (pleasure in the suffering of others). In the study, trolls were identified in a variety of ways. One was by simply asking survey participants what they 'enjoyed doing most' when on online comment sites, offering five options: 'debating issues that are important to you,' 'chatting with others,' 'making new friends,' 'trolling others,' and 'other.' The study recruited participants from Amazon's Mechanical Turk website and two measures of sadistic personality were administered (PDF): the Short Sadistic Impulse Scale and the Varieties of Sadistic Tendencies Scale. Only 5.6 percent of survey respondents actually specified that they enjoyed 'trolling.' By contrast, 41.3 percent of Internet users were 'non-commenters,' meaning they didn't like engaging online at all. So trolls are, as has often been suspected, a minority of online commenters, and an even smaller minority of overall Internet users. Overall, the authors found that the relationship between sadism and trolling was the strongest, and that indeed, sadists appear to troll because they find it pleasurable. 'Both trolls and sadists feel sadistic glee at the distress of others. Sadists just want to have fun ... and the Internet is their playground!' The study comes as websites are increasingly weighing steps to rein in trollish behavior but the study authors aren't sure that fix is a realistic one. 'Because the behaviors are intrinsically motivating for sadists, comment moderators will likely have a difficult time curbing trolling with punishments (e.g., banning users),' says Buckels. 'Ultimately, the allure of trolling may be too strong for sadists, who presumably have limited opportunities to express their sadistic interests in a socially-desirable manner.' Perhaps posting rights should only be unlocked if you pass a test."
All it took was couple of regular guys to take the bait and post a couple of replies, and the trolls get another lease of life, almost like cockroaches getting one lick at the spilled grain of sugar and living for the next six months. Now the trolls get their own academic study and serious professors in horn rimmed glasses and slightly rumpled suits with food stains are going to discuss the trolls... No point in pleading "don't feed the trolls". They have just achieved immortality.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes
Troll of the day
TFA/TFS/taxpayer-funded study was.
Yeah, I enjoy kicking puppies in my spare time. Just as the study's authors predicted!
Everyone is a mental problem ( -__-)
sigh, what's so hard to accept people without degrading them for them having more fun than you'll ever have?
It seems people having fun is slowly becoming a criminal offense... (and to that i say: GO FUCK YOUR PRETENTIOUS DOUCHY TROLL CALLING OTHERS A TROLL)
'Ultimately, the allure of trolling may be too strong for sadists, who presumably have limited opportunities to express their sadistic interests in a socially-desirable manner.'
All we need to do is to create opportunities for the sadists to torture people in real life, and they will leave our precious internet alone.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Only 5.6 percent of survey respondents actually specified that they enjoyed 'trolling.' By contrast, 41.3 percent of Internet users were 'non-commenters,' meaning they didn't like engaging online at all. So trolls are, as has often been suspected, a minority of online commenters
I will contend that a majority of persistent "trolls" would not necessarily answer on a survey that they enjoy trolling.
(1) You will have trolls that claim to be 'debating issues that are important to you' ---- such as the poor speling or grammars of the postes that your are replying to.
(2) You will have trolls that claim to be just 'chatting with others' --- a lie, because they don't want to admit on a survey that they actually enjoy trolling. It's all just innocent chatter.
(3) You will have trolls that claim to be just 'making new friends' --- because they see the reponse as ironic and sarcastic, AND they being trolls -- they are going to try and troll the survey in order to skew your data.
(4) You may also have intentional or unintentional occasional trolls that truthfully DO primarily do one of the first 3 things, and they identify themselves as doing those things moreso than trolling.
(5) "Troll" is lingo --- you may have people who enjoy trolling, who have absolutely no idea what the word 'Troll' means.
Sadists are a misunderstood and marginalized segment of society. Can you imagine growing up as a sadist? How would you tell your parents? They would say, "oh, you're just trying to be mean." They don't understand that this is how you were born. They would say, "oh, you just need to be with a girl, get married, and she will soften you more." It is unacceptable to force sadists into the narrow confines of society's expectations. It is time for sadists and trolls everywhere to come out of the closet and stand for who they are.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Trolling with a "story" about trolling. It's troll all the way down here.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Like a letter and a phone call. They send you a self addressed stamped envelope. You send one half of the code via mail and call them with the other half.
Accounts deactivate at a regular interval and need a reactivation code gets mailed. I'm sure someone can game this but it slows them down.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
In regards to the article I hate to say
Boy, those guys at Microsoft sure know how to make great software. The fact is no other browser at work displays content right like IE 6. It is the best browser! Infact, the W3C is implementing things IE 6 had for years like rich text controls and displaying the box model ... the RIGHT WAY!
Also I have to tell you McAffee and Norton are soo great and a real pleasure to use for the best OS in the world. Nothing makes me all in the mood when I have to see the pleasure of seeing a scan pop up during a lovely reboot but these wonderful products.
In addition, FSF are a bunch of radical socialists from the Obama administration out to destroy your freedom. Just look at GCC and how RMS's radical views on commercial software made sure these tools can never be included in another program like kdevelop or Netbeans. I actually do not write software but think I know everything and like to chat crap from other people so I can laugh at all the responses HAHAH.
This is why only BSD is the only true license etc and only vi should be used to read any licensing terms. Anyone who disagree's is an idiot, socialist, Obama voter, and needs to have lots of replies here and go waaay offtopic.
Sincerely,
Patrick Bateman.
http://saveie6.com/
The study comes as websites are increasingly weighing steps to rein in trollish behavior
I'm just impressed that the summary correctly spelled "to rein in."
Signed, :)
A Grammar Troll.
Duh
Reads better this way,
Psychologists Are Narcissistic, Psychopathic, and Sadistic
People who engage in Psychology are characterized by personality traits that fall in the so-called Dark Tetrad: Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), narcissism (egotism and self-obsession), psychopathy (the lack of remorse and empathy), and sadism (pleasure in the suffering of others). In the study, Psychologists were identified in a variety of ways. One was by simply asking survey participants what they 'enjoyed doing most' when on online comment sites, offering five options: 'debating issues that are important to you,' 'chatting with others,' 'making new friends,' 'Psychoanalyzing others,' and 'other.' The study recruited participants from Amazon's Mechanical Turk website and two measures of sadistic personality were administered (PDF): the Short Sadistic Impulse Scale and the Varieties of Sadistic Tendencies Scale. Only 5.6 percent of survey respondents actually specified that they enjoyed 'Psychology' By contrast, 41.3 percent of Internet users were 'non-commenters,' meaning they didn't like engaging online at all. So trolls are, as has often been suspected, a minority of online commenters, and an even smaller minority of overall Internet users. Overall, the authors found that the relationship between sadism and Psychology was the strongest, and that indeed, sadists appear to psychoanalyze because they find it pleasurable. 'Both Psychologists and sadists feel sadistic glee at the distress of others. Sadists just want to have fun ... and the Internet is their playground!' The study comes as websites are increasingly weighing steps to rein in Psychology behavior but the study authors aren't sure that fix is a realistic one. 'Because the behaviors are intrinsically motivating for sadists, comment moderators will likely have a difficult time curbing Psychologists with punishments (e.g., banning users),' says Buckels. 'Ultimately, the allure of Psychology may be too strong for sadists, who presumably have limited opportunities to express their sadistic interests in a socially-desirable manner.' Perhaps posting rights should only be unlocked if you pass a test."
I'm a bit bothered by the use of Amazon's Mechanical Turk as a source of survey participants. That's by its nature a group of people with lots of free time and few marketable skills. That's a likely place to find trolls.
Slashdot's moderation system seem to do a good job of preventing trolling. I just hope the Dice management doesn't break it, in search of higher "social engagement" or something.
Sometimes, some people just deserve trolling.
They're wannabe psychiatrists, which itself is sad because psychiatry is vestigial snake oil salesmanship and not legitimate science (DSM entries are voted on, not determined through the scientific method).
On a side note, this beta is pretty k-rad elite. I'm lovin' it!
I'd rather be out spending money but Obama took care of that. None left. No jobs. No prospects. Unemployment, then disability like the rest.
Thanks, Obama.
So now I just troll.
Trolling is as legitimate as any other protected speech.
Bring back dueling, problem solved.
Machiavellianism
narcissism
psychopathy
sadism
Hillary is now a Democrat.
Why are stories based on $5/5000 participant Mechanical Turk tasks appearing on Slashdot with regularity now?
Mechanical Turk is gamed like crazy, and the remaining participants aren't going to give careful consideration to the research material in exchange for a nickel.
How about a story on these researchers' methodology? I'd be interested in reading about that, because I'm confident it's full of holes.
Bares significant resemblance to actions by NSA appointed PR brigade. So is it a problem of members of the brigade or is it a management problem? I'm leaning towards management... They forgot vile...
The tea-party libertarians don't exactly refute the narcissistic, psychopathic, sadistic stereotype.
Just this week, Republican tea-party libertarian precious snowflake Senator Ted Cruz single-handedly almost caused the US to default on its debt:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
An action like that would have caused great harm to many Americans, whom he has no empathy for.
That's exactly narcissistic, psychopathic, and sadistic.
Really libertarians, if you don't want to be considered narcissistic, psychopathic, and sadistic, you'll have to behave in socialized ways that would show empathy towards your fellow citizens. That means it will cost you. You will have to pay a personal price to maintain socialization, since socialization is a personal expense.
In political structured form, we call this "taxes".
This is why we statists call you libertarians "precious snowflakes", because your narcissism, psychopathy, and sadism causes you to desocialize and make the mistaken assumption that society values you. The rest of society, the people with power over you, hardly cares about people that do not show empathy towards others, since people are territorial, and we have no interest in allowing you to live in our territory for free.
You have to pay those in power to live. Life isn't free, and it isn't about you.
Decide how you will pay us statist to allow you to live in our state.
No shit, that explains it all
Pretty much all these quantitative sociology studies turn out to be questionable. Between populations of convenience and these hokey numerical personality tests, the results don't inspire that much confidence.
Even though in my day job I do statistics, when it comes to social science I often find qualitative anthropology/ethnography-style research, where researchers actually get out there in communities, try to understand them, and talk to people, quite a bit more informative. Especially for preliminary understanding where it's not often even clear what a phenomenon's broad characteristics are, and therefore difficult to design an intelligent quantitative study with useful metrics.
Alas, this kind of stuff gets more citations and press, because sampling 5000 people and rating them on a 0.0 to 10.0 personality scale using a questionnaire seems superficially more scientific... 'cause it's got numbers.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
For a long time I wondered what led people to leave gratuitously mean comments on Internet forums and bait people into getting into arguments for the fun of it. I always imagined that the Internet, due to it's protection of anonymity, just brought out all the negative aspects personalities (described in the article) that on regular social occasions they would never have the courage to display. The sad thing is, how big the number people like that is.
A study on trolling asked if you troll and if you said yes... Wouldn't a simple yes/no question have been easier.
Water is wet, the earth is round and the Pope is Catholic.
I think we need to go back to the beginning with this "study" and show why anyone slaving as an Amazon Turk would be representative of the larger population (of somewhere).
Like this damn coffee shop I just came in to, Idiots blocking my way stuffing their face with cookies and cheap coffee.
it's just fun?
Even though I think anthropology and sociology are valuable academic disciplines I don't trust the qualitative research very much either mainly because it is not reproducible or verifiable. Two examples I can think of are Sudir Vankatesh. some bogus sociology hustler who didn't feel like going in to the ghetto and having thugs fill out questionaires instead made up a fantastic story about "gang leader for a day" which to anyone familiar with real inner city life can tell is super fake, but the bourgeois professors had no clue and no one can ever verify his wild stories since he said he changed the names to protect their identities since they were all drug dealers. Another case is with David Geraeber who went to Madagascar and did research with stateless tribes there, well what do ya know? his research results all seemed to coincide with his anti-state anarchist ideology. then if anyone goes back there to find the obscure tribes he worked with and it's not what he said he can just say "well, the introduction of technology changed them forever" so his bullshit can never be refuted. Also worth noting Vankatesh got busted embezzling funds from his research group at Columbia in recent years so you can see he has no ethics.
What the fuck did you just fucking say about me, you little bitch? I'll have you know I graduated top of my class in the Navy Seals, and I've been involved in numerous secret raids on Al-Quaeda, and I have over 300 confirmed kills. I am trained in gorilla warfare and I'm the top sniper in the entire US armed forces. You are nothing to me but just another target. I will wipe you the fuck out with precision the likes of which has never been seen before on this Earth, mark my fucking words. You think you can get away with saying that shit to me over the Internet? Think again, fucker. As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot. The storm that wipes out the pathetic little thing you call your life. You're fucking dead, kid. I can be anywhere, anytime, and I can kill you in over seven hundred ways, and that's just with my bare hands. Not only am I extensively trained in unarmed combat, but I have access to the entire arsenal of the United States Marine Corps and I will use it to its full extent to wipe your miserable ass off the face of the continent, you little shit. If only you could have known what unholy retribution your little âoecleverâ comment was about to bring down upon you, maybe you would have held your fucking tongue. But you couldn't, you didn't, and now you're paying the price, you goddamn idiot. I will shit fury all over you and you will drown in it. You're fucking dead, kiddo.
we cannot tell the sparsely littered forest from the junk http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=pr+firm+internet+trolls
Should just have stayed in their driveway to die, I on my way to a Movie, but my GF is laughing at them, I'm about ready to push her out,
In my experience the situation does not seem to be quite so dark. I think a lot of "trollers" just want to be heard and are not actually capable of thinking clearly. So they bicker and compete. They're pleased and proud just to hold and profess an opinion. Only the nastiest are actually anti-social.
It's also worth noting that commenting in general is a cynical ploy to increase pageviews by giving people a way to imagine that they're taking part: "Go to OurTVStation.com and tell us what you think!" There's no follow-up or discussion at OurTVStation.com. It's just a dump for peoples' vain attempt to matter to others.
But who is going to make "posting" work when you force all serious programmers offline?
You need sadists not willing to overlook any off-by-one errors by their computer subs. It's run time for computers.
Those characters: "Narcissistic, Psychopathic, and Sadistic" are on the highest positions which is a well known fact. Does this knowledge change anything or has it in past?
However you are unlikely to get enough commenters on a site to achieve a functioning community.
Never going to give you up....
Never going to let you down....
This sounds like most people... the rest are just tools.
I am a self-admitted troll but I do it for the lulz, never maliciously. There are different kinds of trolls and this study does not differentiate between them, unfortunately.
Perhaps having sadistic psychopathic narcissists trolling is the best solution to dealing with their illness. At least that way they're not torturing kittens and preening in front of mirrors while plotting to over throw the world. It might turn out that the Internet discussion forums are the best cure for this disease.
+1 genius
You'll also note that most of them post as "Anonymous Coward". People with a name, even one without much going for it, usually at least try to be reasonable.
As opposed to this 'functioning' community?
Alas, this kind of stuff gets more citations and press, because sampling 5000 people and rating them on a 0.0 to 10.0 personality scale using a questionnaire seems superficially more scientific... 'cause it's got numbers.
This.
Oh, and bonus points if it has meaningless graphs with misleading axes or arbitrary bins/categories.
Is it not inconceivable that those who would self-report as trolls might just be inclined to troll the tests by giving deliberately extreme answers and responses?
Furthermore, I would suggest the only ones motivated enough to go through all that effort to post would be trolls, psychopaths and sadists.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Trouble is, way to many people classify trolls as "People who disagree with me".
This is particularly prevalent on feminist boards.
This is a hatchet job to discredit all of the hard working trolls out there written by a bully with a foredrawn conclusion! I demand a recount.
That only eliminates lazy trolls.
can someone explain me what was the point of this article?
+5 awesome
Crazy alpha male with the flag stuck up his butt with anger management problems gets trolled hard in less than 10 words. LOL
For once, this may actually be on topic. Still a troll, but not off topic.
I knew it ! ;)
Can we also add psychologists or would that be too much to ask?
I am trained in gorilla warfare
And don't you sound like a right knuckle-walker too.
You seem somewhat confused about who got trolled.
(It was you.)
And psychologists don't know Jack ship about people on the internet. Either.
Privacy is terrorism.
Anything you don't like makes me a Troll, so lets label someone to make them evil.
I have an alternative viewpoint: People who hit the troll button have their head up their arse.
No test required.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Is posting a comment virulently defending an unpopular fringe point of view a troll? Doesn't it depend on whether the person posting it actually believes it or not? An active evangelical might make such posts thinking that they're helping people to be saved. How do you tell if such a post is really trolling or simply someone gullible enough to fall for bizarre arguments and think it's in your best interests to buy into them too?
Killuminati RIP
welcome to death row
http://www.flamewarriorsguide....
These cartoons summarize the on-line world rather nicely. (My favourite is Bliss Ninny)
---- The above post was generated by the Turing Institute. Maybe.
"Machiavellianism ... others)."
I will take that as a compliment.
Dave Barnes 9 breweries within walking distance of my house
If you only walk on your right knuckle, you just spin in place. Same as with the left knuckle, of course, for anybody who wants to read too much into it.
copypasta
..as "Free Speech" would be Trolling.
Go to the fucking hell, you little supporters of Torture, Kleptography, War Industry and Monopolism. Yeah, and FUCK YOU APARTHEID APOLOGISTS.
Signed
Sesaon D. Troll
Person who will call out the corruption of Money And Elite. In other words, users of "Free Speech Concept".
Captcha: Pagans. So that's the opposite of "corruption posing as church" ?
Uhm.
Thanks?
My posts must look like this because I get downmodded as "troll" all the time on slashdot.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Applicable moderation:
+1 informative
+1 funny
+1 troll
I am from the KGB and we have posioned all your precious bodily fluids !!!!
And your toothpaste, sucker. Our flourine keeps you from joining NSA and working for us.
Seems like any time I comment on a discussion and have the nerve to express an opinion that is contrary to the prevailing groupthink, there's always some douchebag who calls me a troll. And here I was thinking that a "troll" is somebody who says things in a carefully crafted manner specifically designed to piss people off. Nowadays it means "anyone who says anything my huge overblown ego doesn't want to hear."
Very lame. New York has bought both the Red and the Blue pill.
It's a case of finding what you want to find. Not much objective research me thinks.
Internet commentors can and do indeed make a political difference. We sometimes even help to throw a wrench into the gear of war industry. We help good people like General Dempsey.
Israel and war industry wanted war on Persia. We stopped it. By means of telling people facts about Iran, Jews in Iran, the Saudi menace, Jewish Apartheid policies and the like.
We did succeed. And New York is pissed. So they call us "Trolls".
You know what, New York ? Your God is with us, not with you warmongers.
1. A genuine troll who adds nothing to the topic.
2. Anybody who posts negative comments about Israel, no matter how valid their points are.
3. Anybody who looks at the global temperature graphs and concludes that actually, the temperature has not gone up for almost 2 decades.
Because I'm pretty sure they didn't even know what trolling was to begin with...as do most people who are actually bothered or upset by actual "trolling." As someone who is regularly accused of being a "troll" simply for offering an unpopular or controversial viewpoint....there's an absolute TON of people who have no clue what trolling actually is and simply associate the word "Trolling" with ANYTHING they deem to be "negative" behavior....especially contradicting viewpoints.
That only happens if the teacher loses control of the classroom
More on this exciting development later.
Breaking news: Psychologists and Slate.com spotlight trolling by trolling Internet trolls. More at 11.
Ah, the philosophical school of "no users -> no trolls". A somewhat faulty philosophy, yet not without its merits. For example, server costs are not going to be an issue. However, most who subscribe to this school of philosophy eventually transition to the school of "no site -> no trolls".
I'm an Internet troll, and I actually do have most of the diagnostic criteria for antisocial personality disorder. But... A long time ago, I realized that being mean to people was not a winning strategy. So I tend towards Kibological trolling; more emphasis on funny, less on mean. I don't want to get people mad or upset, because that's boring. I want to do things that are funny. I want people to laugh when they realize they've been trolled, not get mad. ... Unless, of course, they're the boring kind of Internet trolls, the ones who are so proud of how they're all disengaged and uncaring. Them, I want mad. I want them to realize that being emotionally engaged against your will isn't really all that fun, and I want them to do it in a way that provides entertainment to all the people they've been upsetting. Ideally, I want them to end up laughingstocks so that when they try to make people mad, people just laugh at them for being ineffective.
This is way more interesting, and way more fun, than spamming chat with stupid racist remarks to try to get a rise out of people. Same instincts, by and large, I just decided to apply them in ways which create situations that are more fun for me and other people instead of less fun.
So basically, I think their conclusions are sort-of-valid, they're just looking only at one subset of trolling, and not the most interesting one.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Pair that with openid so that you don't have to do this for *every* site and you might be getting somewhere.
The real problem isn't that a small proportion of people are sadistic trolls. This is a problem only because trolling is socially acceptable on much of the internet today. If the great majority of non-trolls could agree on better communication norms and enforce them, trolling would be minimal.
That is the real reason President Reagan did what he did when he freed the people, to one up the USSR
Bunch of assholes
I was looking in the mirror this morning -- for quite some time -- and although there were people behind me I wanted to hurt, close self-examination revealed no particular difference in feelings re simply hurting them, or hurting them badly. With that in mind:
Don't click on any links that offer to download the new Justin Bieber tune. They lead to websites that will send the new Justin Bieber tune right into your computer. There's no fixing things after that. Don't claim you weren't warned.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
This is how it's done.
Yes. However, there is bad trolling -- interfering with legitimate discourse -- and there is good trolling -- baiting idiots like birthers, creationists, dimwits who think congress is full of stand-up personalities... trolling those people is pure entertainment, yet serves an important social purpose by keeping many of them at a time glued to their keyboards talking about how "Barry" is going to take their guns, etc.
There's trolling, and there's trolling. The one is despicable, the other a public service.
Troll! :)
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Internet trolls are narcissistic, psychopathic and sadistic
Watch me watching myself dancing to Justin Bieber.
They're supposed to call them sociopaths now, since they found that all priests, politicians and lawyers fit the pattern of psychopaths. Sociopath is a political term, a code word to the judge to sentence this scientist to a long incarceration.
"Psychologists: Internet Trolls Are Narcissistic, Psychopathic, and Sadistic"
So I'll say it:
DUH!
Just that? Erin Buckels is a moron that do not seek for the RIGHT trolls! We are more than that, whiner!
I think that most of the trolls may actually be just really bored people, looking for a easy way out of their boredom, and thus they're not even trolls the whole time.
Hard to make people believe you say what you mean and mean what you say.
If it is against the group think.
I guess the psychologists were looking in the mirror. Some of them understood that they were looking in the mirror, while others did not. Beware the ones that were naive.
In a forum where you're reluctant to post your favourite sexual position (honesty held) why would you regard it as open season to post your political position (honesty held)?
There's a way to engage with most issues without dragging in this or that ideological apparatus. The same applies to the political sub-genre known as organized religion. Evangelism is the most political act known to man. Religion itself is not necessarily political, but it quickly becomes political where people feel the need to make others aware that these convictions exist.
Part of the problem is that people fall into the habit of using their worldview as the starting point for every engagement. The same old argument gets a new suit of clothes to suit the occasion. This doesn't take a great deal of cognitive effort.
It's a lot more cognitive work to write bottom up, starting with the issue first of all, then pointing out, perhaps, where it fits into various frames of reference.
This is the cognitive effort of actually engagement.
One of the appeals of grabbing two cans of coloured paint and a flap of cloth and declaring in a loud voice "I am a Springbok" is to put the effort of espousing your worldview on cruise control, while those around you who don't run up equal and opposite colours are left to cook every meal from scratch.
As Mark Twain once said, never contest your identity in a shouting match with people who source their sesame-seed identity buns from McDonald's: everywhere you go, five minutes later, there's more of the same.
No, the opposite of trolling is not merely conviction, it's honest conviction plus cooking from scratch.
In the above post: s/y/ly + s/ly/y.
Man, what did I eat for lunch? Apparently, some kind of distal neurotoxin. This is a strange betrayal of the old fingers I've rarely experienced.
Since when did Machiavellianism come to be defined as a "willingness to manipulate others"? The traditional attribute of "The Prince" is that he manipulated other people for a purpose. Doing it simply for entertainment seems to be a far different thing. If I lied to you to get you to take your medicine, that could be Machiavellianism. If I lied to you because I was a huge dick and wanted to fuck with you, that would seem to be "Assholishianism".
I think there was a study not long ago that showed that men like breasts. Not kidding. This troll study appears to be along the same lines.
Study something we already know the answer to and then find the obvious result.
Thank you science... *yawn*
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Slashdot NOT worth saving:
Slashdot worth saving:
The former is news for gorms; the later is news for nerds. We can't fix this protesting CSS.
I know an Irishman, he looked like a typical Irishman white pasty faced hairy with a tiny penis. Anyway he was living with two U.S. women, and he said to me these stupid yanks all think they are psychologists and they are all mentally backward bastards. He said they said to him you don't show your emotions you keep things secret. He said to me he only wanted to screw them not talk to the dumb bitches. In the U.S. he said they've got a syndrome for everything if you move talk walk you have a syndrome stupid people. Amazingly for an Irishman he was right yanks are stupid.
What is the justification for labeling the personality trait as psychopathy? Both that ans sociopathy are characterized by a lack of remorse and empathy. The difference being (as I understand it) that psychopaths are considered to be dangerous to themselves and others. I'm not sure raising sh*t storms on various online sites for fun qualifies as 'dangerous'.
Have gnu, will travel.
The US should default, rather than perpetually devaluing their currency.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...they've been trolled
#irony
...you nazi libertarian communist illiterate whack-job faux liberal neocon conspirators!
Well, as a narcissist, I get a sadistic pleasure from my Machiavellian trolling. Maybe I am a psychopath.
I'm sot sure about how useful this sort of test is though. Almost everyone has a sense of schadenfreude. I think most people will deny this publicly. Someone who answers "trolling is important to me" is probably going to spend the rest of the test in a troll mindset, and possible exaggerate their position.
There's also the question of what a troll is. Posting how the moon is a ridiculous liberal myth, and responding earnestly to idiots who take you seriously is pretty harmless, although that itself could be said to be "Dark Tetrad" stuff.
It was possibly you...
Hasn't understood online discussions. Everybody can troll, everybody can be a troll, the same posting can be seen as trolling or not trolling by different people, some people try to troll and only ignite a useful discussion. Trolling isn't something you can objectivly define.
So they were a sadist, in one case I always thought it went much deeper mentally.
I won't mention their handle else this reply would be a trophy.
One user on the Usenet was fairly bright, and was able to hide themselves this while running a website that was never popular but had some very good in depth Windows help. Nobody ever did locate them other than the country they lived, they were that good.
They did indeed have a problem, being so offensive to everybody all the time just isn't normal. Your aware with Usenet you can't just ban somebody, they are there when they wanted, for as long as they wanted, as close to their heaven as this person could get.
The newsgroup I frequented was their home base, I just ignored them no matter what was said and all was good on my end; it's the ones that replied that took the brunt of verbal abuse (ah duh), nothing was taboo here. I never did block them, I guess I had a morbid curiosity over the situation.
Coming into to a newsgroup for the first time and being viciously verbally attacked for no reason - people respond to put themselves in a better light or above this person; it never ended well for them.
I've seen them make people so mad they swore their lives purpose from that moment on was to find this person and rip portions of their body off (always something painful and slow). They on the other hand I'd never seen threaten or suggest harm to anybody, just verbally abuse.
This was a bright mentally ill person, (many diagnosis were made) who drew no greater pleasure than making people mad, upset or a real prize was someone who tried to keep up with them, they were the ones in the end willing to swim oceans to find them.
I've never seen anybody else coming close to this persons trolling, they never lost, always coming out on top of their game; and I watched it go on for some 6 years, and they were very much part of the newsgroup when I first subscribed to it.
Funny thing I just checked expecting to see them still at it, they quit posting the same month, year I quit posting - I found games and haven't been back. Mayhaps someone caught up with them. Yet their post are normal right up to the end.
No I didn't read any of the articles, I've seen one of the best in action; there is something mentally wrong with them, reading the meaning for sadist they do/did fit the description very well.
I don't understand how anything in this research is in any way accurate.
In my experience, real trolls, people who torment others for their own gain, are nothing more than bullies, who in turn do what they do, not because they enjoy it, but the effects that come from what they do. So they don't necessarily enjoy belittling someone, but it makes them feel more important by comparison, whereby it would seem the conclusion is that they don't know the parameters and extent of self-confidence and derive their self-worth at the expense of others instead of from themselves.
Then everything mentioned in the article can be derived from those simple terms. Trolls are not necessarily narcissistic, psychopathic nor sadistic, they're just insecure tw*ts. Isn't that equally probable or indeed much more so?
Side note, psychologists reaching psychology conclusions and making things a lot more complicated than they need to be, seems just an inherently human property as a means to reinforce their own beliefs and feel more important/complex as opposed to simple, not entirely unlike trolls.
All this would then mean trolls are important in that they help expose our insecurities, challenge us and would help us grow if we took that opportunity and that they're just a part of "growing up", relating constructively to opposition etc.
But what do I know? I'm just trying to understand this weird and wonderful world of ours and relate to it in an increasingly constructive manner.
Require a credit card to use a forum. Have the moderators charge it one dollar for the first instance of trolling, and double it for each additional instance. To stop a sadist, simply reflect the pain back to them.
I piss off bigots.
Definitions like this seem so black and white, not to mention terribly convenient because so much of how one defines "troll" (hereafter referred to as tro-x, to avoid the lameness filter) depends on where one stands.
I admit, I like arguing. Is that "being a tro-x" in our social-conformist society? This isn't just an internet thing; the friends that have known me the longest will probably say it's been forever; in fact, it's probably why we're friends - I love debating any subject from politics to religion to the power structures in the Holy Roman Empire. I good argument on anything is satisfying, and rewards broad knowledge, quick wits, and a healthy understanding of human psychology. (I don't use ad hominems because their a pointless waste of breath, not because social conventions require their avoidance; against someone reasonably intelligent, the use of an ad hominem is a signal that you're losing, you don't have any better thing to say. Might as well tip your king over right then and save your self-respect.)
Further, I enjoy attacking sacred cows. Unexamined beliefs that people hold sacrosanct for NO logical reason are practically my metier, although I admit that sometimes I weary of it as - with any zealot, political, religious, cultural, politically-correct - I deep-down know I'm not changing anyone's mind anyway. That's not right, actually: I *may* be changing someone's mind, it's just not my arguing partner but instead some 3rd party observing the debate who may be unresolved and find something in what I say that makes sense. So I'm not so much arguing against the person I'm talking to, as using them to posture for the (vague hand-waving) audience. Getting my opponent really wound up is part of the tactic - nobody argues rationally when they're enraged. It makes it easier to debunk them (and their points) as credible. As much as "tu quoque" is a logical fallacy and doesn't prove anything, it does seriously damage a person's credibility to have their naked hypocrisy exposed.
Does that make me a "tro-x" in common parlance? I suspect to many people it would.
Finally, declarations of "tro-xish" behavior have so very much to do with whether you agree with the point being made or not. I'll give you an example of what many reading will (I suspect) say is a tro-xish question: "As I understand it, 5.6% of survey respondents admit to being trolls, and this is considered a 'deviant' thing, signifying serious core personality disorders (like narcissism, sadism, and psychopathy). Curiously, many surveys show that the actual population of homosexuals is also around 6%, and yet our culture seems to be insisting that they are just an 'alternative normal'. How is that logically consistent?"
This has all the hallmarks of (what I believe is) considered a tro-xish question:
- a basis in fact
- attacking a target normally protected from criticism
- not really expecting an answer, just a host of flaming replies that essentially amount to "you stupidhead"
- yet is still an ACTUAL question: why does some behavior, at a certain level of frequency, merit the label of "deviant" while other behavior at the same frequency of appearance, not? (which would be the non-tro-xish way to pose the question, of course, as long as we stayed away from specifics)
-Styopa
"...people who engage in internet trolling are characterized by personality traits that fall in the so-called Dark Tetrad: Machiavellianism (willingness to manipulate and deceive others), narcissism (egotism and self-obsession), psychopathy (the lack of remorse and empathy), and sadism (pleasure in the suffering of others)."
Thank god science is here to explain these things!
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
Thinks you're gay. And fat.
Sockpuppet multiple accounts galore make it so: You downmoderarte someone with no valid reasons behind it, then troll the person by anonymous coward replies and use the other multiple accounts you have (sockpuppets) to do more damage. Ask Webmistressrachel (who has the nerve to call trolling 'white hat trolling'), Jeremiah Cornelius http://slashdot.org/comments.p..., and especially another of their sockpuppet accounts (countertrolling and how logging out of your account after downmodding doesn't undo their bogus unjustifiable downmods) HOW they go about it here -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... but perhaps, most of all, webmistressrachel's "alter-ego" Barbara, not Barbie = tomhudson (same person using diff. multiple registered accounts here) who LEFT this site in May 2012 supposedly (not) after I caught him/her (?) red-handed in the act doing ALL of what I noted above.
* Your "so-called moderation system' is also being USED AGAINST DECENT LONG-TIME USERS (during the 'beta' protests here) rather unjustly also -> http://linux.slashdot.org/comm...
APK
P.S.=> It's not a FAIR moderation system @ all - especially when my initial sentence about unjustly downmodding a post without validly backing up your reasons for it (or being able to identify WHO did the downmod, which makes it perfect for trolling others & being an a-hole), ala my challenge to others here to disprove my points on hosts files giving users more speed, security, reliability, & anonymity even (to an extent only here) -> http://news.slashdot.org/comme... is a PERFECT example thereof... once I do that? The trolls go off-topic, performing illogical ad hominem attacks on me, making death threats, etc. - et al... this place, needs a SERIOUS FIX for that (id'ing WHO issues downmods IS that fix, but for SOME REASON, they don't implement it here... "gee, wonder why?" (not) - they live on fights here, since it gets more posts/views like controversial topics do)... apk
Calm down Joe. You'll get to run for President.
Think about it. It's fucking hilarious.
As we speak I am contacting my secret network of spies across the USA and your IP is being traced right now so you better prepare for the storm, maggot.
It is true it is true you (Original post.) are being followed by a GUI interface. Made in Visual Basic!
If you are not thinking with objects solid as rocks, you are today's illiterate.
"Troll" in the sense of internet trolling means "to toss a line out and see what you can catch."
Not "a shaggy creature who hides under bridges and is afraid of goats."
Fingering you to death. Ohh, yeah, maggot - be afraid. This guy will come at you with no lube and a fist full of pennies.
Their methodology is fundamentally flawed for a number of reasons, including their definition of troll.
I just classify those as Wrong
Lets start with Congress/Senate members
Casteism
They could be political activists in opposition in a dictatorship, then the dictator would be the first to say "well they're just sadist trolls, we need to shut them up".
And not only that, it destroys freedom of speech. Any dictator would love to saboutage freedom of speech and blame it on "the damn sadist internet trolls".
Just one more thing internet trolls and politicians have in common.
I thought the Dark Tetrad Troll was Alexey Pajitnov, creator of the popular video game Tetris, when he broke the game in 2001 with the "infinite spin" rule change and went on to claim publicly that free software licensing destroys the software market.
pal and a confidant.
...is that they project their own psychoses onto others in order to have an excuse for their anti-social behavior. It would be sad if it wasn't so destructive.
I disagree. Trolls are just bullies. They are like that because that's their personality and it's easier for them to express it online because they know they have an audience.
If you look at the graphs of this study, all those bad personality traits are higher for ANY HUMAN BEING INTERACTING WITH ANOTHER HUMAN BEING. The least sadistic/narcissitic/psychopathic are the people who don't participate, don't chat, don't talk to another human being. I can vouch you have to be a little insane to want to speak to another human being. :)
As long as the trolling isn't malicious or hateful, I don't think it's an issue
I want to know where he found a reliable supply of gorillas to fight.