The Warring States of NPF - "How to be a Master Troll" or "How not to act on the Internet."

The Warring States of NPF (http://www.nuklearforums.com/index.php)

- Bullshit Mountain (http://www.nuklearforums.com/forumdisplay.php?f=3)

- - "How to be a Master Troll" or "How not to act on the Internet." (http://www.nuklearforums.com/showthread.php?t=41073)

It is what trolls do

Quote:

Originally Posted by EckScizor (Post 1170420)

The true art of trolling has been lost. Even actual trolls are pretty terrible at it.

Sitting under bridges and stealing children?

Man I've sat under a fair few bridges in my time. Ain't no trolls under there. A few robber-barons and a childcatcher or two but no trolls.

Can't tell if successful or not.

There's an anime GIF I saw once that summarizes internet trolling all perfectly for me but I have zero context of it and only saw it once. Request thread!

Request threads are in and of themselves bad trolling attempts. Because no one ever delivers and when they do it's always to spite smarmy assholes like me who say no one ever delivers.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Amake (Post 1170274)

Counter-trolling is the real challenge, and also a right and good thing to do. The goal is to make a troll feel bad about being intellectually dishonest, upsetting people and generally wasting everyone's time, or at least make it good and pissed off and let it rage impotently at you, both which serve to reduce the amount of trolling the troll does, both which is likely going to take a lot of time and effort.

On a surface level, any response you give a troll looks like it plays into the troll's hands. It's common knowledge, and like so many common knowledges an oversimplification. I've personally destroyed several trolls, so trust me: It can be done.

There is however no exact method that guarantees success. All trolls are different. But these general guidelines have served me well:

*If you're one of those people who get more eloquent and type faster the more upset you are, don't be afraid to show emotion if you are earnestly offended. Rant it up. This will look like just the outburst the troll wants, and people may tell you to take a break, not be all "serious business" and so on. But while many a troll like to pretend they don't care about people, it takes a genuine psychopath to not think twice if it can be made to understand its actions hurt actual people.

*If the troll refuses to answer a polite question or directly contradicts itself, point out these inconsistencies over and over for every time the troll posts without addressing the issue. Word your accusation differently each time, and make sure to count how many times it has failed to answer adequately. Not every troll is capable of feeling shame, but this may be a worthwhile tactic if the troll shows signs of vanity or entitlement.

*If the troll resorts to calling you names, go into deep and personally embarrassing detail and tell it why it's right, and why you're actually much worse than it could even imagine. A troll may quickly lose its confidence if it thinks it can't come up with insults bad enough for people to not mistake them for compliments.

*Merely ignoring or /ignoring a troll will dissuade it eventually, certainly, but there's an art to ignoring in such a way that shows the troll you actively disregard everything it says; that you receive its messages and find each of them unworthy of response. The cheap way to do this is to passive-aggressively talk around the troll, indirectly panning its messages while talking to someone else. In a basic example:

Alice Nottroll: Sure is sunny today.
Bob A. Troll: What are you talking about Alice there's a storm outside.
You: Yeah Alice there's certainly no storms today.

It works best in a chat, and it's pretty lame. To really pull off ignoring you need to basically have the troll standing in front of you and shout in your face, and not react at all. On the Internet that might mean letting the troll know you have its attention and then stop doing everything until it leaves.

*If you're enlightened enough, instead of any of the above you can engage the troll in meaningful, personal conversation until it forgets to be a troll. Make friends with them until they beg for mercy.

Well, I can possibly think of ways to counter-COUNTER-troll, but that's just me.

Quote:

Originally Posted by synkr0nized (Post 1170370)

"Trolling" these days seems to be like "hacked."

Apparently, if I post on your FB account after you leave your screen unlocked and your browser logged in, I have hacked you. That seems a pale version, or at best the least-effort-required version, of hacking anything. That's a little how I view the word "trolling" being thrown around in more modern Internets Times (tm).

As to the actual OP, most of that looked like riding the 12-year-old AOLer typing style to victory with some very generalized "newbie" tips. A "master" troll likely has taken better measures to understand the context of the forum/board/comment system community and where the hot-button issues are. It just feels like, to me at any rate, a real troll will either come so prepared that a simple guide adds little to the effort or be going for the cheaper, easier laughs (and perhaps to see how quickly a ban can be achieved) in which case a guide is wholly overboard.

*shrug*
Maybe I am just too jaded by constant exposure to stupid shit in /trade and the like to give typical trolls any credit.

e: lol@ "counter-trolling"
Most of the time folks just sit around declaring "victory" despite neither side making any compelling leaps forward.

As I did state in the original post, it's more of a parody then anything. If I wanted to write an actually effective trolling guide, I probably could have, but yes it's the more typical "13 year old AOLer". As I was pretty certain that when I was writing it that someone wanting to troll wouldn't even need a guide. It's pretty simple to do and not exactly a challenge to get inflamed responses in return, which can get you light speed bans, even if you aren't being outwardly offensive.

In my own defense however, the meaning of these 'asshole guides' isn't only learning how to be an asshole, but the author being an asshole to the reader. It just points out, 'who needs an actual guide for this crap?' People have their own methods of being complete douchebags and the guide I listed is only one of the ways. Wouldn't want people to think that I actually troll people. I have a hard enough time posting my thoughts sometimes without some misinterpreting what I wrote. (That isn't a reference to NPF, since I hardly post here anyway.)

Can't find the gray that matches post background :/

Quote:

Originally Posted by Red Mage Black (Post 1170565)

Well, I can possibly think of ways to counter-COUNTER-troll, but that's just me.

As I did state in the original post, it's more of a parody then anything. If I wanted to write an actually effective trolling guide, I probably could have, but yes it's the more typical "13 year old AOLer". As I was pretty certain that when I was writing it that someone wanting to troll wouldn't even need a guide. It's pretty simple to do and not exactly a challenge to get inflamed responses in return, which can get you light speed bans, even if you aren't being outwardly offensive.

In my own defense however, the meaning of these 'asshole guides' isn't only learning how to be an asshole, but the author being an asshole to the reader. It just points out, 'who needs an actual guide for this crap?' People have their own methods of being complete douchebags and the guide I listed is only one of the ways. Wouldn't want people to think that I actually troll people. I have a hard enough time posting my thoughts sometimes without some misinterpreting what I wrote. (That isn't a reference to NPF, since I hardly post here anyway.)

tl;dr

ha ha hoo hoo hee hee

Another tactic is to use your vast intellectual prowess to make up racial slurs of your own invention that no one has ever heard of before, and also to write slimy, horrific things about people of other religions, in order to compound the tragedy of someone using their creativity in the most vile ways possible as opposed for some form of good.Like this asshole. WARNING: Islamophobia.

I prefer parodies though, like Christwire, where it's instigating Poe's Law by being as over-the-top and satirical as possible. This is in a way the "good" form of trolling in that it only works on people who are too dim to realize you're being sarcastic in the first place (surprisingy numerous), which provides extra humor to people who are in on the joke.

These days it's harder not to troll than it is to be a master troll. Take any hot button issue in a general discussion forum. Let's say, for the sake of example, abortion. The term "troll" has taken on such a broad definition that all it takes to be a troll is a dissenting opinion.

Let's say you decide to start using Blender. The posts on the community site are strictly related to the software except for an off topic board. There is no official stance on the off topic forum (i.e. the community leaders don't use it to promote any agenda) so it attracts a broader range of users than, let's say, a discussion forum that caters to feminist college students.

Now let's say someone creates a post celebrating the opening of a new Planned Parenthood facility. They're not doing it to rub the pro-life members' faces in it. They just post the information to alert users in the area. However, they will draw accusations of trolling from the pro-life users and possibly from some of the pro-choice users if they feel such topics should be kept off of the board. If those users remain silent initially, the thread goes on, and a pro-life user expresses a dissenting opinion, not to raise the ire of anyone but expressing deeply held beliefs in a way that's germane to the conversation, they will invariably be considered trolls.

On the other end of the spectrum if a pro-life user posts about the closing of a Planned Parenthood facility and doesn't act like it's a tragedy the pro-choice members will accuse them of trolling, or if the conversation continues and a pro-choice member expresses their opinion that member will be accused of trolling.

I see it all the time on Xanga. Liberal bloggers will spend more time trying to prove a conservative blogger is just out trolling than actually blogging on politics (which is counterproductive when they set the blog up to be political in nature) and conservative bloggers will do the same. It's not just little kids trying to get attention anymore.

It's descended into a "not one of us" mentality. What it boils down to is we've regressed to the days when "the others" are sub-human. The European immigrants did it to the Asians in the 1800's - early 1900's, whites did it to blacks until the 60's, and now liberals do it to conservatives and conservatives do it to liberals.

If you want to be a troll all you have to do is express a dissenting opinion.

Quote:

Originally Posted by dwmitch (Post 1170827)

lol, pro trolling