On Trolling and Punkassblog
Published by punkass marc March 22nd, 2007 in Punkass!Hi everyone!
Each and every one of you reading this post falls into one of 2 categories:
1) Troll
2) Not a troll
Sometimes, it can be tough to tell the category to which you belong. After all, nobody likes to think of themselves as this. Or this. Or this.
Punk trolls aren’t the same thing as Punkasstrolls.
But some of you are definitely trolls, and as Kyso noted, I’ve adopted a scorched-earth policy regarding your comments. Why? Aren’t I just being mean and/or cowardly? Isn’t this destructive to our commenting community? To understand the answers to these questions, we must first identify what makes a troll a troll and remove all doubt as to whom we’re targeting.
There are some obvious markings that’ll help you identify yourself as a member of the troll species:
1) If you’ve been paid to leave antagonistic comments on blogs, you’re a troll.
2) If you post antagonistic comments under multiple names to create the false impression of a quorum on websites espousing beliefs you hate, you’re a troll.
3) If you’ve been banned at a site and continue to try and sneak around said banning, you’re a troll.
4) On a related note, if you use IP masking software, you’re a freaking uber-troll.
Those markings are usually prominent enough that said trolls know they’re deeply trollish. It’s the more subtly striped individuals, those feigning ignorance or willfully deluding themselves about their trollitude, who can be tough to capture and often irritate a community the most.
Every website probably has their own implicit line in the sand — anyone who crosses it earns the scarlet ‘T.’ Some of the “readers” of PAB have yet to grasp how or why they’ve been designated as trolls, and it’s because they’ve lept over, then urinated on, that line for me. So, help them understand my policy, allow me to make the implicit explicit. This will expose our primary pool of trolls and provide justification for the aforementioned scorched-earth policy.
In my ideal world, blogging’s about discovery and discussion. The blogs I read usually teach me things I didn’t know, give me information I didn’t have, or help me understand something complex. On top of that, most of them have an enjoyable discussion section in which people engage in genuine, constructive conversation. This doesn’t mean said conversations don’t get heated or even nasty, but the honest intent of nearly every commenter is to participate in meaningful dialogue with people s/he respects.
In my mind, people who inject themselves into a conversation without that intent are trolls.
But how can you “prove” one person lacks respect for another or has ill will in her/his heart when commenting? Obviously, you can’t, not with 100% certainty. But you can sure make some educated guesses, especially if you stick to one simple rule: if a commenter treats the most basic elements of the shared worldview of a blog community with obvious disdain, s/he lacks respect for the site and its community.
Please note the rule includes the phrase “the most basic elements” and the word “shared” — they’re essential to understanding the difference between discussion and trolling.
If a person frequents Feministe and regularly takes issue with its posts, the commenter may not be a troll. For example, if s/he disputes the claim that a specific thing is sexist, or disagrees with the argument that a specific action was right or wrong, etc., this level of engagement challenges the conclusions drawn, not the fundamental assumptions on which all analysis at the site rests.
However, if the commenter regularly poo-poos the notion that sexism or male privilege exists, or that it’s bad, then the commenter is disputing the most basic elements of the worldview shared by all Feministe writers and readers. If that person continues to visit Feministe and pick fights on those grounds, it demonstrates a total lack of respect for everyone associated with Feministe.
But why? Isn’t that person just concerned with educated the poor, misguided souls there? Doesn’t the commenter simply want to help them see the light?
No.
Again, to be clear, we’re not talking about disagreeing with conclusions, or even challenging fundamental assumptions of an author or a post — we’re talking about attacking the grounds on which everything related to the site stands.
This is disrespectful because it inhibits the sorts of discussion sought by 99% of the writers and reader present.
For example, if I write a post explaining why men shouldn’t rankle at insults directed at the patriarchy, the intention of my post is to discuss precisely that. The post doesn’t focus on whether or not patriarchy exists because, as a feminist and feminist-supportive site, our discussion operates from the fundamental assumption that institutionalized male privilege is a fact of life.
As a human being, you’re free to take issue with that stance, but you’re not free to do it at PAB repeatedly because our authors and intended audience members aren’t interested in constantly rehashing why they see and reject the notion of patriarchy. We don’t wish to run in circles.
And again, note the word “repeatedly.” Someone who’s honestly never encountered the concept of patriarchy before is an entirely different sort of commenter than one who has already decided against the idea and who regularly returns to a feminist site to rehash the debate at the same fundamental level (i.e. “there is no patriarchy!”).
If you’ve come to a site like PAB simply to dispute the basic elements of its shared worldview and been told to go away, yet you keep returning, you come with the intent to either disrupt the conversation or to antagonize the site’s authors and audience. Neither is respectful.
So, to summarize and extend, you’re considered a troll at punkassblog if you come with disrespect in your heart to our wesbite. We can ascertain this about you if you:
1) Repeatedly return to the site to challenge its fundamental worldview as a means of distracting or antagonizing the community.
2) Don’t like the authors — or the authors don’t like you — yet you return to engage in insult battles.
3) Try to “win” arguments the rest of us aren’t interested in having.
Others may have their own set of rules for identifying their trolls, and I’m sure there are other ways to pick them out, but those are the rules we use here. And sure enough, PAB trolls like Vultan, Hans, Adam/Barin, PatrickKelley, and others meet all three of the above criteria.
As an aside, I have to wonder what makes a person want to waste so much of their time acting this way. Don’t those people have better things to do? Don’t they have communities of their own for their discussions? Don’t they have lives? Don’t they at least have a job? I can identify a troll, but I have a long way to go before I understand their dark and twisted hearts.
Discussion and disagreement are welcome at PAB, and most of us stick to arguing about the topic at hand in a given post. We might challenge its assumptions or conclusions, but we don’t try to assault the shared worldview of our entire community — especially when told to stop. This separates us from the trolls.
My scorched-earth policy towards their behavior is intended to prevent our comment space from being ruled by those who show persistent disrespect via the criteria above. No person has any “right” to occupy this space, and if a person acts like a troll, that person can expect to be toyed with or removed.
The only cruelty being displayed here comes from those with malice in their heart towards our community. The only cowardice being displayed here comes from those who engage in disingenuous behavior to try and make their “point.”
Punkassblog uses my middle finger for a logo. Trolls should know it’s directed specifically at them, and I will snuff out their inane swarming in that spirit so the rest of us can agree or disagree with honest intentions.
39 Responses to “On Trolling and Punkassblog”
- 1 Pingback on Apr 14th, 2007 at 10:08 am
What if I promise to be REALLY GOOD and to never say THOSE BAD THINGS again? Please? Pretty please???
Hear hear! I would add that if you join a discussion and have exactly zero interest in listening to the viewpoints of others in it and simply want to shout them down, then you are a troll. You can’t whine about the site owners “not tolerating dissent” if you yourself will not actually engage in discussions. People have no concept of what free speech is about. Free speech is a concept meant to encourage discussion and debate; it’s not a license to shut it down by being a pain in the ass.
I would never show up at a Christian blog and just persistently troll and demand that they justify their religious beliefs to me over and over and over again. I would never go to a business forum and demand that every thread be turned into an argument over whether there is such thing as free market capitalism. I disagree with their shared assumptions, but it’s stupid to do something like that. I’ll go a step further and point out that just because a discussion is starting from an assumption I don’t necessarily agree with doesn’t mean that the discussion is fruitless. I read a lot of Christian blogs with interest—I don’t agree with their religion but nonetheless find some of their conclusions compelling. So really, there’s exactly no intelligent reason to go trolling other people’s sites this way.
Oh wait, there’s one. If you’re openly threatened by a community’s very existence because you suspect they’re in the right but you very much don’t want them to be, you have a reason to try to shut them down. But even then, you’re an asshole who values your own anxieties over the truth.
What I really don’t get are the “resident” trolls. I understand regularly reading the opinions of people you don’t agree with, but why would you keep having the same argument with them over and over, as if you thought you were going to change anyone’s mind? Maybe it’s more fun than hanging out at conservative blogs where you have to be constantly reminded of the stupidity of people who agree with you.
nicely laid out. i like that angle, so true. antagonism toward the very premise of the site.
OT:
But, but what about WoW Trolls? Or the ever-noble and stalwart oWoD Changeling Troll kith?
Stupid internet-jerks giving trolls a bad name.
i r n3rd.
Punk trolls aren’t the same thing as Punkasstrolls.
Yeah, but I hear the Punkasstrolls secretly wish they had as much anti-culture anger and righteous sound system destruction as a Punk troll has on his worst day. 8^D
Why do you hate the First Amendment?
I hate, f-in’ hate, people who act like coming onto your site and acting like a piece of trash means that you have to take it, because otherwise you’re violating their civil rights! (Heraclitus, I get you’re joking, by the way, hehe.)
My blog is on my site, paid for by my money. It’s sorta like . . . my apartment. An apartment where I’ve invited folks in for a discussion about things I find relevant or important. I didn’t invite them over to piss on the furniture and smear shit on the walls. And if they dare do that, yeah, I think it’s OK to throw them out. Just like if they were in my physical home.
I hate it when people say that a given person is “stifling dissent” by removing verbally abusive people from their site.
They can get their own damn blogs! There are a dozen sites for it, open to one and all!
Why do you hate the First Amendment?
Because I want to be able to force everyone to worship my left pinky finger just like I do.
Why do you hate the First Amendment?
It beat him up once in front of a girl he liked.
You don’t have a left pinky finger. People that think you have a left pinky finger are idiots. There is no first amendment, either. I feel sorry for people who are stupid enough to believe in the first amendment. There is no such thing as the alphabet either, and letters don’t form words. Get a life.
Help, help! I’m a half troll … I got paid to leave antagonistic comments, but the cheque bounced!
Funnily enough, trolls like Adam North are _still_ trying to get around their banning to post comments on this thread. Really, how dense do you have to be to not get the hint? How could the above not have made _any_ impression on you?
Still, it’s nice to see him move into the ranks of obvious, undeniable, even-my-grandma-would-get-it trollery by following rule #3 of obvious trolls: desperately trying to subvert your banning.
I wonder if anyone’s given serious thought to scientifically studying the “blog troll” phenomenon. It would seem to me to represent a great view into the psychology of some people…
I also think it’s interesting that “Adam North” admitted that the other “Flash Gordon” contributors are his sock puppets, when last time we accused him of that he denied the whole thing. I wonder what changed?…
Two of my least favorite kinds of troll:
-the one who claims to “agree” with you, but then shifts in a Bizarro version of themselves, like: Yes, women are wonderful and deserve respect, they are powerful and awesome, that’s why we should enact forced birth laws, so they can be great moms too !!!111
-the one who expects every discussion to be turned into Feminism 101 or Black People 101 or Disabled Issues 101: How come feminists/african-americans/handicapped people don’t like the world ? I think the world is awesome and cars go vroom ! Please explain their sadness THNX !
I applaud your earth-scorching.
Another good way of finding a troll is that they don’t leave a way for you to, y’know, “strike back”. They’ll come to YOUR blog and post shit of all thicknesses, but they never seem to have a blog of their own — or if they do, and you post on it, even in a non-trollish fashion, they seem to inevitably behave extremely poorly, showing you far less courtesy and respect than they were shown.
That’s my experience, anyway.
Funnily enough, trolls like Adam North are _still_ trying to get around their banning to post comments on this thread. Really, how dense do you have to be to not get the hint? How could the above not have made _any_ impression on you?
It gives one a whiff of why they want to maintain a culture where victims of sexual harassment and assault are not believed. No, they can’t take a hint or respect the word no.
I wonder what changed?
He finally realized that posting agreement with himself as multiple people does not mean that there are multiple people who are that dumb? Just a thought…
I also think it’s interesting that “Adam North” admitted that the other “Flash Gordon” contributors are his sock puppets
Didn’t the whole gang start with a guy called “Shaun Williams” or something like that? I figured he was the real one, and everyone who came after him was a sockpuppet. Now he seems to have made “Adam North” the leader. How mysterious.
“This should be obvious, or clear enough, even for you” is perhaps the troll sign obvious enough even for me. I hereby shamefully admit to having fed them far too often.
How do I get paid for leaving antagonistic comments on blogs?
sabotabby, you have to join the Reichwing.
Once cleared through their extensive background check (they don’t care if you lie, cheat, steal, or have no qualifications, just as long as you’ve been on the right for a week or two), you are given a daily set of talking points from Karl Rove and are then paid piecework for each post you leave. There is a bonus system for using concern with your trolling. Creative use of sockpuppets also gains bonuses…
All in all it’s a sweet deal for anyone lacking morals and a soul…
You know, people might be more open to listening to your arguments if you weren’t all so fascistic and like Stalinist Russia ready to censor everything.
I agree with Michelle, you don’t want to listen to any dissenters because you’re afraid of being proven wrong.
Michelle, is that snark or real comment?
If that’s a real comment, then you seem to have basic problems with your understanding of the political spectrum, in this case understanding the very deep differences between Fascism and Communism.
On the other hand, Prague is a beautiful city, and the beer is great. So we do share that in common…
It’s snark, Mike. Check out the email of “Someone who doesn’t know michelle”
It’s getting harder to tell every day.
Somebody turns over a card that happens to be the Red Queen and…Michelle is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life…
You demoncrats are just afraid of the truth! If Hitler (who was a LIEbrul like you people) were alive today (which he probably WOULD be if you appeasers had had your way!), he would moderate his blog comments, too!
You call us trolls–we call ourselves Freedom Commenters.
Is it ironic that our fastest Godwin-ed thread is one that is actually about trolls? I think so.
Ah trolls. I love that in addition to exploratory minds and people who like ask questions, existence also includes folks who just want to bug the shit out of other folks.
And
“I wonder if anyone’s given serious thought to scientifically studying the “blog troll” phenomenon.”
The NY Times did an article — w/o cheesecake photos — on flaming /trolling / general bad internets behavior. A friend of mine in Sri Lanka posted some good thoughts around that: http://www.indi.ca/2007/02/psychology-of-flaming/
The other thing that a lot of trolling has done is deadened people’s ability to recognize fake trolls or people parodying trolls. Distance, everyone!
Why DO they bother? It’s a real puzzlement to me. We need a study!
Give me a break. Those guys didn’t say anything offensive. You just didn’t like what they had to say because they were taking the time to post evidence and well reasoned arguments.
Besides, they were basically the best thing that has ever happened for you blog in terms of traffic except for one little flare in June 2006. http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=&url=punkassblog.com
Tornado, it’s Marc’s blog. If he wants the trolls he can leave them be. If he stops the trolls, it’s his business right?
Who the hell are you to question what he wants on his own blog - THE BLOG HE PAYS FOR?…
Offensive? Who said anything about offensive?
You and your “colleagues” would rather waste time messing with blog communities than:
1) Read my post and take 5 seconds to grasp it
2) Make a sincere argument
I don’t give one birdpoop about offensive. It’s all about respect, and as anyone can tell from my post (which you obviously didn’t read), there is no way their behavior was in any way respectful.
Also, what evidence would that be? I fail to grasp the evidence that contradicts this obvious laundry list of patriarchal evidence:
* In the United States, 1.3 women are raped every minute. That results in 78 rapes each hour, 1872 rapes each day, 56160 rapes ech month and 683,280 rapes each year.
* 1 out of every 3 American women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime.
* The United States has the world’s highest rape rate of the countries that publish such statistics. It’s 4 times higher than Germany, 13 times higher than England, and 20 times higher than Japan.
* 1 in 7 women will be raped by her husband.
* 83% of rape cases are ages 24 or under.
* 1 in 4 college women have either been raped or suffered attempted rape.
* 1 in 12 males students surveyed had commited acts that met the legal definition of rape. Furthermore, 84% of the men who had commited such acts said what they had done was definitely not rape.
* 75% of male students and 55% of female students involved in acquintance rape had been drinking or using drugs.
* Only 16% of rapes are ever reported to the police.
Now, like your brethren, shoo.
Marc, the real reason I let that one through is because he did link to the graph, which is kind of helpful. I for one will be reviewing what we did in December to try and get some of that mojo back. But there’s nothing in march that distinguishes it from the previous months, so what it was supposed to prove is beyond me and I found it kind of amusing.
Yeah, we seem to have sporadic bursts of huge traffic, but I’ve never found a pattern other than “hitting the blogozeitgeist at the right moment.” If you can bottle that, we’ll be unstoppable.
Give me a break. Those guys didn’t say anything offensive.
I forget—is this guy defending the Klan, Holocaust deniers, or people who see rape and domestic violence and don’t see a problem? I get them confused—after all, variations of all three tend to come in the same person.