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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
'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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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."
For once, this may actually be on topic. Still a troll, but not off topic.
The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can't. Not without your help. But you're not helping.
I'd like another helping of the turtle stew, please.
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."
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.
Pair that with openid so that you don't have to do this for *every* site and you might be getting somewhere.