Trolls: The Town Drunks Of The Internet

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http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201106 ... rnet.shtml

Trolls: The Town Drunks Of The Internet
from the don't-quit-your-day-job dept

A study conducted by researchers at Northwestern University has reached a conclusion that many of us have entertained but dismissed as "not having a study conducted by researchers at Northwestern University behind it." Namely: trolling is like being sloppy drunk.

According to the science guys:

A new study has found that anonymity gives people the same feeling of abandon as power and alcohol intoxication.

"Although these pathways appear to be unrelated on the surface, they all lead to disinhibited states through a common psychological and neurological mechanism," said Jacob Hirsh of the university's Kellogg School of Management.

Dr Hirsh's colleague Professor Adam Galinsky said the loss of inhibition led to "significant behavioural consequences".

Ah, "loss of inhibition!" Is any combination of words sweeter to the ears (and livers) of trolls and drunkards alike? To be a troll is to be transported back to the heady days of frat house "Pre-Saturday Night Party" parties, where the cheap beer flowed like cheap beer and many bad decisions were made, most of them irrevocable.

Much in the same way that alcohol can turn a fertile mind into a karaoke-singing, one-man party bursting with OPINIONS! (and some vomit), trolling can turn a regular, possibly decent person into an apopleptic nightmare full of half-formed rejoinders and circular logic, which often devolves into schoolyard name-calling flameouts (well, a schoolyard full of drunks...) or sudden exits from the conversation, presumably to go "sleep it off" on the bathroom floor.

There's more from the professor, which explains a lot of what we see here at Techdirt on a daily basis:

When people lose their inhibitions, they often behave in a manner more consistent with their true motives or character. At the same time, they also tend to be more easily influenced by their environment.

"In effect, disinhibition can both reveal and shape the person, as contradictory as that may sound," Professor Galinsky said.

The end result is that power, alcohol and anonymity can all inspire either strong pro- or anti-social sentiments in people.

The study may help explain why anonymous commentators on the web often appear to hold extreme views.

Extreme views? Anti-social sentiments? Random hollering about someone's day job? It's all here. And for all the talk about "not feeding the trolls," it's hard to resist, especially when they're packing a buzz and getting the conversational munchies. Besides, who wouldn't want the chance to respond to a non sequitur composed of misspelled words and terrible analogies? We really want to take the high road, but the troll road is like a free ride straight downhill into STFU-ville. (Plus, the troll booths are closed! Bonus!)

Sooner or later, if the subject matter is contentious enough, the Techdirt comment threads are overrun with loudmouth drunks/trolls, not unlike the state of Wisconsin on any given night. (Or afternoon.) Ugly words are exchanged and brash statements made, most of them sorely in need of a citation. Hours later, it becomes a wasted blend of ALL CAPS shouting and any number of logical fallacies, before presumably heading quickly downhill to muted futile sobbing and calls to former sexual acquaintances.

And much like the virtual alcoholics they are, the trolling commenters will rarely let a day go by without a quick pull from the hip flask labelled "Submit," even if they've got nothing more than a quick "FUD" to spit out like an accidentally swallowed cigarette butt. Even the worst of hangovers won't stop the trolloholic from popping in quickly to call someone a liar or misread the byline on a post.

So, keep this valuable information in mind, Techdirt readers, the next time you find yourself trapped in an elliptical argument with an armchair Bukowski (sans the everything-that-made-Bukowski-appealing): they're just drunk on trolljuice, a potent blend of ignorance, anger and "chicken hawk syndrome."

How else would you explain this AC's one-man flamewar, in which he paints every disagreeing commenter with a broad paintbrush dipped in self-hatred (often mistaken for "mockery," but the acidic taste of bile gives it away), painting everything the same ugly shade of misanthropy?

Or this one?
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201102 ... .shtml#c44

Need one more?
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201106 ... shtml#c189

Don't let the Anonymous Coward label fool you, though. Techdirt is filled with thoughtful and humorous AC's, while also serving as a host for a variety of proudly-named trolls. The real trolls are the commenters who show up for one reason: to insult as many Techdirt readers as possible while simultaneously trying to reframe the debate around their own twisted logic. You'd think it would be harder to type with such an outsized chip on your shoulder, but the internet never ceases to amaze.

Trolls, like the ones singled out above, are like the uncle you purposely uninvited to your wedding. The one who shows up anyway and spends the entire night alternately abusing the open bar and the wedding guests, bitterly decrying organized religion and the institution of marriage to anyone who will listen and others who are actively eyeing the exits. He swaggers around in a state of progressive drunkeness, alienating people left and right, before collapsing anti-climatically in the coat room after making a last-ditch pass at your newly-minted sister-in-law.

As the hangover ebbs, he remains secure in his belief that he "totally ripped those backwaters rubes a new one" when in all reality, all he did was pound home the fact that people hate him for a reason.

Trolls, just remember that your spluttering anger and misplaced indignity is often a source of amusement for us. Other times, it's just the same old $h1t, like when dad starts hitting the sauce and pounding out angry letters to the editor decrying the city council's recent decision to change local street signs to initial caps only. Sure, he seems to be truly perturbed by this now, but by the next day, it's just another piece of paper that ends up going straight from the Smith-Corona into the nearest wastebasket. The only difference is that, thanks to the miracle of THE INTERNET, the "angry letter" can be submitted instantly, 24/7, requiring nothing more of the brainstem-operating troll than the minute amount of hand-eye coordination needed to push a button.

So, bring on the worn-out cries of "Freetard!" and "Kool-Aid!", you trolling lushes. Just remember, our beverage of choice is booze-free.

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Anonymous alcoholics? Study finds web trolls get a feeling of abandon similar to drunks

http://www.news.com.au/technology/anony ... 6080815072

EVER wonder why you come away with a sense of exhilaration after a hard day of trolling the internet?
It could be because you're drunk with power.
A new study has found that anonymity gives people the same feeling of abandon as power and alcohol intoxication.
Researchers at Northwestern University in the US found that all three states led to extreme behaviour — both good and bad.
"Although these pathways appear to be unrelated on the surface, they all lead to disinhibited states through a common psychological and neurological mechanism," said Jacob Hirsh of the university's Kellogg School of Management.
Dr Hirsh's colleague Professor Adam Galinsky said the loss of inhibition led to "significant behavioural consequences".
However, the study found that those consequences weren't always the same.
When people lose their inhibitions, they often behave in a manner more consistent with their true motives or character. At the same time, they also tend to be more easily influenced by their environment.
"In effect, disinhibition can both reveal and shape the person, as contradictory as that may sound," Professor Galinsky said.
The end result is that power, alcohol and anonymity can all inspire either strong pro- or anti-social sentiments in people.
The study may help explain why anonymous commentators on the web often appear to hold extreme views.
Dr Darryl Cross, a psychologist at Crossways Consulting, said many people believed there were no repercussions for their actions online.
"It's the fact that they're not confronted visually with another person," he told news.com.au.
"People believe the myth that they can say things that ordinarily they wouldn't be able to say just because they are online."
The consequences of web comments posted under the guise of anonymity can be very real. In a landmark case in 2009, supermodel Liskula Cohen won the right to sue an anonymous commenter who called her a "skanky ho" on a blog.
Dr Cross said the vitriolic nature of internet comments was a symptom of something similar to a split personality.
"I think what we have is, people have two personas," he said.
"The first is an in built human instinctual personality and that’s always there for all of us, it's an animal instinctual personality.
"And then there's always the second personality which is the more conservative, the more guarded, the personality is more in perspective.
"What you've got (online) is people who are prepared to let their instinctual personality out rather than really taking a second perspective, looking at it in a different way, and then saying the second thing that comes into their mind instead of the first."
Dr Cross said one way to bring some decorum back to online discussions was to enforce compulsory registration for websites with a comment area.
"Anything that requires personal responsibility has got to be a plus," he said.
"Once they have to register and they're held accountable, then that's really going to be a major step forward."
Failing that, Dr Cross suggested people come up with a litmus test for what was acceptable to say and what wasn't on the web.
"If they think about their grandparents, that might be one way that they can actually consider what they're going to be writing," he said.
"What would your grandma and grandpa say about it?"
.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)

Trolling, identity, and anonymityEarly incidences of trolling were considered to be the same as flaming, but this has changed with modern usage by the news media to refer to the creation of any content that targets another person. The Internet dictionary NetLingo suggests there are four grades of trolling: playtime trolling, tactical trolling, strategic trolling, and domination trolling.[15] The relationship between trolling and flaming was observed in open-access forums in California, on a series of modem-linked computers in the 1970s, like CommuniTree which when accessed by high school teenagers became a ground for trashing and abuse.[16] Some psychologists have suggested that flaming would be caused by deindividuation or decreased self-evaluation: the anonymity of online postings would lead to disinhibition amongst individuals[17] Others have suggested that although flaming and trolling is often unpleasant, it may be a form of normative behavior that expresses the social identity of a certain user group [18][19] According to Tom Postmes, a professor of social and organisational psychology at the universities of Exeter and Groningen, Netherlands, and the author of Individuality and the Group, who has studied online behavior for 20 years, "Trolls aspire to violence, to the level of trouble they can cause in an environment. They want it to kick off. They want to promote antipathetic emotions of disgust and outrage, which morbidly gives them a sense of pleasure."[16]

In academic literature, the practice of trolling was first documented by Judith Donath (1999). Donath's paper outlines the ambiguity of identity in a disembodied "virtual community" such as Usenet:

In the physical world there is an inherent unity to the self, for the body provides a compelling and convenient definition of identity. The norm is: one body, one identity ... The virtual world is different. It is composed of information rather than matter.[20]
Donath provides a concise overview of identity deception games which trade on the confusion between physical and epistemic community:

Trolling is a game about identity deception, albeit one that is played without the consent of most of the players. The troll attempts to pass as a legitimate participant, sharing the group's common interests and concerns; the newsgroups members, if they are cognizant of trolls and other identity deceptions, attempt to both distinguish real from trolling postings, and upon judging a poster a troll, make the offending poster leave the group. Their success at the former depends on how well they – and the troll – understand identity cues; their success at the latter depends on whether the troll's enjoyment is sufficiently diminished or outweighed by the costs imposed by the group. Trolls can be costly in several ways. A troll can disrupt the discussion on a newsgroup, disseminate bad advice, and damage the feeling of trust in the newsgroup community. Furthermore, in a group that has become sensitized to trolling – where the rate of deception is high – many honestly naïve questions may be quickly rejected as trollings. This can be quite off-putting to the new user who upon venturing a first posting is immediately bombarded with angry accusations. Even if the accusation is unfounded, being branded a troll is quite damaging to one's online reputation.[20]
Susan Herring and colleagues in "Searching for Safety Online: Managing 'Trolling' in a Feminist Forum" point out the difficulty inherent in monitoring trolling and maintaining freedom of speech in online communities: "harassment often arises in spaces known for their freedom, lack of censure, and experimental nature".[21] Free speech may lead to tolerance of trolling behavior, complicating the members' efforts to maintain an open, yet supportive discussion area, especially for sensitive topics such as race, gender, and sexuality.[21]

In an effort to reduce uncivil behavior by increasing accountability, many web sites (e.g. Reuters, Facebook, and Gizmodo) now require commenters to register their names and e-mail addresses.[22]

Concern trollA concern troll is a false flag pseudonym created by a user whose actual point of view is opposed to the one that the user claims to hold. The concern troll posts in Web forums devoted to its declared point of view and attempts to sway the group's actions or opinions while claiming to share their goals, but with professed "concerns". The goal is to sow fear, uncertainty and doubt within the group.[23]

An example of this occurred in 2006 when Tad Furtado, a staffer for then-Congressman Charles Bass (R-NH), was caught posing as a "concerned" supporter of Bass's opponent, Democrat Paul Hodes, on several liberal New Hampshire blogs, using the pseudonyms "IndieNH" or "IndyNH". "IndyNH" expressed concern that Democrats might just be wasting their time or money on Hodes, because Bass was unbeatable.[24][25] Hodes eventually won the election.

Although the term "concern troll" originated in discussions of online behavior, it now sees increasing use to describe similar behaviors that take place offline. For example, James Wolcott of Vanity Fair accused a conservative New York Daily News columnist of "concern troll" behavior in his efforts to downplay the Mark Foley scandal. Wolcott links what he calls concern trolls to what Saul Alinsky calls "Do-Nothings", giving a long quote from Alinsky on the Do-Nothings' method and effects:

These Do-Nothings profess a commitment to social change for ideals of justice, equality, and opportunity, and then abstain from and discourage all effective action for change. They are known by their brand, 'I agree with your ends but not your means.'[26]
The Hill published an op-ed piece by Markos Moulitsas of the liberal blog Daily Kos titled "Dems: Ignore 'Concern Trolls'". The concern trolls in question were not Internet participants; they were Republicans offering public advice and warnings to the Democrats. The author defines "concern trolling" as "offering a poisoned apple in the form of advice to political opponents that, if taken, would harm the recipient".[27]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Trollface.svg