Science Proves That Trolls Ruin Everything
- Thread starter Fanghawk
- Start date
Well, part of the problem is that who a "Troll" is, is debatable. In general someone who had a strong opinion that is contrary to the majority of people participating in a discussion or response thread is viewed as a troll. Ditto for people telling you things you don't want to hear, especially if they are stated strongly, and happen to demolish what you wanted to believe to begin with. In general people respond with anger when they have strongly held beliefs challenged rather than even considering alternative viewpoints or *gasp* realizing that defining parts of their
personal beliefs might be entirely wrong.
The problem with a scientific study of this sort is that you need a real community to see trolls or what are being called trolls incorrectly, and see things unfold as they happen, to truely see the response. Scientists creating a simulated trolling and then telling people to just read it, as opposed to participating in the discussion, is kind of meaningless and shows no understanding of the phenomena.
It should also be noted that if your looking for evidence of the problems involved in internet communication, the things to consider are situations like a certain Bioware employee who made a grandiose statement about avoiding the forums because of how "toxic" they were. In general, when it's actually important, people will tend to simply remove themselves or ignore things they don't want to hear or consider (even when they need to, like in this case) rather than actually remaining glued to it to the point of changing for the positive or negative.
Look again with Bioware and what they did with "Dragon Age 2" they asked fairly early on in the dev process if it was okay for them to have a human hero, with no origin story, and a pre-defined name in exchange for increased voice acting. The answer was an overwhelming "no" from the community. Bioware generally ignored everything they didn't want to hear, listened only to positive feedback, and then told everyone they did what they wanted to do with community approval. On some levels, looking at later "toxic forums" comments it leads me to believe that they might simply be creating their own reality while becoming detached from the real thing, due to simply ignoring any negative feedback they get as the work of "trolls".
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To be honest, if scientists are going to do useless intenet studies, I'd be more interested in finding out if any of the "Memes" created by 4 Chan or Anonymous can be seen to be working.
The point of a Meme is to basically burn something into the collective consciousness to the point where it doesn't go away and can actually be instinctively inheranted as a sort of ancesteral memory. An example of this would be to say take a group of people with a very distinctive style of society and arcetecture, steal their babies, drop the babies on an habitable planet to be raised by antiseptic robots and then see what they wind up building over a period of time. The idea of a meme is that if you were to say do it with Arabs their eventual buildings would match the existing MO of towers with domed tops, theocracy, and a general style of dress because this is how the people did it for thousands of years and the people would "remember" these things without actually remembering them consciously and develop along those lines. The same could apply to any group with a distinctive style ranging from Europeans and their style of arcetecture, to Asians, or whatever else. The idea features heavily in science fiction by way of justifying how someone might say visit planet seperated from the rest of spacefaring humans that fell into barbarity, rose from it, and then grew to almost exactly resemble some ancient civilization or other based on what the people were like or what group wound up dominating.
There have been all kinds of permutations of this over the years including "killer memes" that result in the destruction of those they infect, viruses that move through ancesteral memory, and similar things.
At any rate the joke with 4chan and Anonymous was that some of this stupidity was supposed to be circulated on such a high level and so heavily saturated that it would seep into the human consciousness through the wonder of the internet. Every time I hear someone talking about "old memes" or "memes they wish would die" they seem to kind of miss the point, and truthfully I've actually run into a few kids and stuff who have spouted or referanced memes without knowing the source or original context. When you consider even something as benign as Lolcats has wound up being everywhere for over a decade now you do have to wonder if The Internet is accelerating the process dramatically as some people theorized (which began the entire schtick).
That kind of a study might be more interesting, see how many kids recognize memes or think they seem vaguely familiar or "heard that somewhere, but don't remember where". Before they even really have unfettered net access.
Of course that would be a waste too, but better than trying to study trolling as a phenomena. That's almost as silly as people studying "cyber bullying".
personal beliefs might be entirely wrong.
The problem with a scientific study of this sort is that you need a real community to see trolls or what are being called trolls incorrectly, and see things unfold as they happen, to truely see the response. Scientists creating a simulated trolling and then telling people to just read it, as opposed to participating in the discussion, is kind of meaningless and shows no understanding of the phenomena.
It should also be noted that if your looking for evidence of the problems involved in internet communication, the things to consider are situations like a certain Bioware employee who made a grandiose statement about avoiding the forums because of how "toxic" they were. In general, when it's actually important, people will tend to simply remove themselves or ignore things they don't want to hear or consider (even when they need to, like in this case) rather than actually remaining glued to it to the point of changing for the positive or negative.
Look again with Bioware and what they did with "Dragon Age 2" they asked fairly early on in the dev process if it was okay for them to have a human hero, with no origin story, and a pre-defined name in exchange for increased voice acting. The answer was an overwhelming "no" from the community. Bioware generally ignored everything they didn't want to hear, listened only to positive feedback, and then told everyone they did what they wanted to do with community approval. On some levels, looking at later "toxic forums" comments it leads me to believe that they might simply be creating their own reality while becoming detached from the real thing, due to simply ignoring any negative feedback they get as the work of "trolls".
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To be honest, if scientists are going to do useless intenet studies, I'd be more interested in finding out if any of the "Memes" created by 4 Chan or Anonymous can be seen to be working.
The point of a Meme is to basically burn something into the collective consciousness to the point where it doesn't go away and can actually be instinctively inheranted as a sort of ancesteral memory. An example of this would be to say take a group of people with a very distinctive style of society and arcetecture, steal their babies, drop the babies on an habitable planet to be raised by antiseptic robots and then see what they wind up building over a period of time. The idea of a meme is that if you were to say do it with Arabs their eventual buildings would match the existing MO of towers with domed tops, theocracy, and a general style of dress because this is how the people did it for thousands of years and the people would "remember" these things without actually remembering them consciously and develop along those lines. The same could apply to any group with a distinctive style ranging from Europeans and their style of arcetecture, to Asians, or whatever else. The idea features heavily in science fiction by way of justifying how someone might say visit planet seperated from the rest of spacefaring humans that fell into barbarity, rose from it, and then grew to almost exactly resemble some ancient civilization or other based on what the people were like or what group wound up dominating.
There have been all kinds of permutations of this over the years including "killer memes" that result in the destruction of those they infect, viruses that move through ancesteral memory, and similar things.
At any rate the joke with 4chan and Anonymous was that some of this stupidity was supposed to be circulated on such a high level and so heavily saturated that it would seep into the human consciousness through the wonder of the internet. Every time I hear someone talking about "old memes" or "memes they wish would die" they seem to kind of miss the point, and truthfully I've actually run into a few kids and stuff who have spouted or referanced memes without knowing the source or original context. When you consider even something as benign as Lolcats has wound up being everywhere for over a decade now you do have to wonder if The Internet is accelerating the process dramatically as some people theorized (which began the entire schtick).
That kind of a study might be more interesting, see how many kids recognize memes or think they seem vaguely familiar or "heard that somewhere, but don't remember where". Before they even really have unfettered net access.
Of course that would be a waste too, but better than trying to study trolling as a phenomena. That's almost as silly as people studying "cyber bullying".
Argh. After reading the original article.... It's rather annoying that it starts with an agenda. It starts with a decided idea on climate change. It even states how the people who deny it don't understand the science at all. Then it goes into the few paragraphs talking about what this article is about as if what the article here states is not the main idea of what the original article is. That aside, the ideas stated here are old idea. Furthermore, the link to the study is dead (ie. 404 not found). And then the article trolls the so called trolls, which leads me to believe they don't know what a troll is.
As far as the people who are knocking the potential for a scientific study on something that seems so obvious... that is what science is for. Science looks for definitive answers and doesn't take the face value of a given situation. Science involves testing and retesting to prove something. That isn't to say Kahneman and Tverski didn't prove trolling leads to trolling before trolling even existed, they did.
As far as the people who are knocking the potential for a scientific study on something that seems so obvious... that is what science is for. Science looks for definitive answers and doesn't take the face value of a given situation. Science involves testing and retesting to prove something. That isn't to say Kahneman and Tverski didn't prove trolling leads to trolling before trolling even existed, they did.
Obviously I agree with you about Kahneman and Tverski's work. But your off base on the your original assertion by Kahneman and Tverski's standards. Emotion is the quick intuitive part of the brain, it's the effortless part of the brain that is using that. The rational slow part is lazy and doesn't want to be involved if it doesn't have to be. And it's the constant influx of emotion that trolling leads to that basically prevents rational thought from prevailing.rollerfox88 said:
Actually, I think so called "Real trolls" (Anyone who calls themselves a professional troll without actually working for a newspaper) are worse then the sub-par trolls you are talking about. Firstly, they misuse the term professional, which infuriates me. Secondly, with an idiot troll you can notice them immediately and move on with the debate. With someone like you (A self declared troll) it is much, much harder to move on with the debate because you are within the debate, deliberately derailing it and being a penis. What is worse for a debate, people in the background yelling "LOL U MAD BRO LOL HITLER IS AWESOME KEK" or people within the debate trying to derail it and infuriate you?kouriichi said:
Sorry, either way you are being a penis.
OT: Trolls ruin everything. Huh. Next science will prove that I am a sexy beast or that smoking makes you look cool. Whats next, Captain Obvious?
Heh, while I was reading this post a little voice in the back of my head was wondering if you were an Elcor.Distance_warrior said:
OT- I honestly just never understood the point of trolling (where my definition is people who participate in a discussion for the sole purpose of provoking the other participants or derailing the discussion). I would just consider people who get their jollies from that sort of thing bad people.
PS- If anyone remembers the original dictionary definition of trolling (real word), try using it in conversations with frequent internet users, then explain it to them after a minute of confused stares. It will entertain you, and improve their vocabulary. Everybody wins! Bonus points for using the fishing related definition.
You know, while I'm not debating the article, there is one other interesting viewpoint to consider here: has anyone else noticed that trolls have a tendancy to bring other web users together into a unified front? Like, everytime a solitary troll shows up and causes trouble, all the other users around tend to work together to laugh him out of the room.
Navigate Youtube often enough and you tend to see this in abundance. I would actually submit that trolls have made the internet a better place overall, by giving users common enemies.
Captcha:
Finish this poem: For whom does the bell toll?
A: It tolls for thee.
Creepy captcha is creepy.
Navigate Youtube often enough and you tend to see this in abundance. I would actually submit that trolls have made the internet a better place overall, by giving users common enemies.
Captcha:
Finish this poem: For whom does the bell toll?
A: It tolls for thee.
Creepy captcha is creepy.
I thought the point here was that trolls (in this sentence, I'm using trolls to mean 'inflammatory, reactionary asshats') make people more secure in their previously held beliefs and less likely to welcome contradictory evidence or new data? Despite everyone saying "no, DUH!" in this thread, I find that very interesting and honestly quite accurate.fapper plain said:
I am also amused by the idea of somehow forwarding this study to the Conservapedia admin, to point out that their anti-liberal, anti-evolution and anti-everythingelsethatisn'tintheirspecificversionofthebible ranting is only pushing people further away from the views they're trying to espouse. The same goes for any hardcore fundie or atheist who'll go to a forum populated by their opposite number and post the stupid "there is no God/God is sending you to hell for not believing" bullshit - it'd be nice to have an actual scientific study to cite when informing them that they are achieving exactly the opposite of what they intended.
Yeah, but by then the damage is done. The thread is derailed and nobody is in a rational frame of mind to resurrect the discussion. Plus you get a whole bunch of people who only contribute to say "Hey, this guy is such a troll" and then leave again, which makes the majority of the posters in a thread hit-and-runners, and causes the troll (or just the person who doesn't agree with the majority opinion but is incapable of expressing their viewpoint like a rational human being) to react aggressively in response.bigfatcarp93 said:
Ask not for whom the troll trolls...bigfatcarp93 said:
He trolls for thee.
Rude or derogatory comments don't really get regarded as trolls a lot of the time. In fact it is easy to see that a lot of people who think that they are decent people fighting against trolls think that they have a free licence to be as rude and derogatory as they like with no consequence in terms of being a dick. Certainly it takes more than not liking some popular video game series or not liking the direction of some trend in gaming to be a troll. What is the point exactly in equating people who don't like something about Mass Effect to climate change deniers? It's almost like being a passive consumer who never complains is what you need to be to be a decent respectable person who does not poison the groupthink mind.
With experience you can build a thicker skin so you don't react over emotionally to certain types of language. In fact real seasoned trolls say that their mission is to train up people who they think are not emotionally insulated enough to deal with the world. If you can't deal with a troll then how can you deal with the sort of propaganda messages you get from people who really have some heavy duty experience and resources behind them.
With experience you can build a thicker skin so you don't react over emotionally to certain types of language. In fact real seasoned trolls say that their mission is to train up people who they think are not emotionally insulated enough to deal with the world. If you can't deal with a troll then how can you deal with the sort of propaganda messages you get from people who really have some heavy duty experience and resources behind them.
Didn't that entire study (and this article, for that matter) serve as one massive smörgåsbord buffet for all of trolldom?Fanghawk said:
I wonder if the scientists running this study factored in Penny Arcade's GIFT (Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory):
Regular Person + Anonymity + Audience = Fuckwad. They may have been generalizing, but that does explain trolls' behavior.
Regular Person + Anonymity + Audience = Fuckwad. They may have been generalizing, but that does explain trolls' behavior.
