Trolls, Haters and Flame War Generals? Thank You

[JP Sherman]

Interesting article. Though in itself I fear it feels a little like troll food.

I wonder if you take into account the number of people who simply spot the troll and keep walking -- if you're taking responses into account you'd certainly want to note that the majority of the people responding are probably unstable in some measure themselves.

Excellent questions.
1: It's not easy to measure the number of people who ignore the trolls. However, if you own the forums, you can measure the number of people who clicked "quote" or "reply" to the trolling comment and then not post. This gives you a decent sample size of people who ignore the troll.

2: Another thing to consider is that there are some pretty standard commenting percentages. If a site's articles averages around 1000 views and 100 comments, you can measure the effectiveness of the troll's activity using basic analytics compared to a benchmark.

However, if you're doing this kind of analysis on a site you don't have access to the analytics to (which is most often the case) your data is much more subjective and inaccurate. This is the primary reason why trolls are tagged and followed to see if you can identify a pattern.

The key is to identify a behavioral and contextual pattern... one troll-ish comment is just one data-point. This is why I look at the patterns of comments and the types of troll-ish behaviors to research.

 

[GLo Jones]

Damn man. You really hit some good points in that article. Forwarding it now.

Thanks for breaking down the "Troll" demographic for me, it makes sense now you have stated different segments.

Well actually...

I think the term "troll" is gruesomely misused, both here, and on a lot of other forums.

Trolling is when you're just baiting people into a reaction. When you want to see nerds rage, and make a post, that's trolling. If you make comments, with the sole intention of getting reactions out of people, you're a troll.

Most of the types you mentioned aren't trolls, because they sincerely believe in their own words. They're more like Hitler or Stalin, close-minded extremist assholes, but they're not trolls.

This.

The 'Anarchist' Troll mentioned here is the only true type of troll. Granted the rest fall into slightly similar categories, but they shouldn't be described as trolls.

The vast majority of people here don't understand trolls, and it makes me cringe seeing people discuss things they misunderstand.

 

[Gyrefalcon]

I had never looked at trolls as a shark-tagging opportunity. This was a very interesting and thought-provoking piece. I look forward to more of your writing.

 

[Aphroditty]

The 'Anarchist' Troll mentioned here is the only true type of troll. Granted the rest fall into slightly similar categories, but they shouldn't be described as trolls.

The vast majority of people here don't understand trolls, and it makes me cringe seeing people discuss things they misunderstand.

Heaven forfend that the internet categories we made up for market research purposes get ruffled, eh?

Really, you can only ever know a troll by the consequences of their actions, and all the types of 'trolls' listed are means to very similar ends. Purposefully or not.

 

[GLo Jones]

The 'Anarchist' Troll mentioned here is the only true type of troll. Granted the rest fall into slightly similar categories, but they shouldn't be described as trolls.

The vast majority of people here don't understand trolls, and it makes me cringe seeing people discuss things they misunderstand.

Heaven forfend that the internet categories we made up for market research purposes get ruffled, eh?

Really, you can only ever know a troll by the consequences of their actions, and all the types of 'trolls' listed are means to very similar ends. Purposefully or not.

Regardless of what they achieve, a troll is defined by it's intentions. Trolls aim to provoke a response.

They'll join Facebook groups dedicated to the loss of a child and claim how funny it is, or how the child was to blame/deserved it. They will turn up in specific forums and claim extremist views. They will pretend to be offensively ignorant, or absurdly opposed to mainstream logic.

They could be more subtle, and disguise themselves as normal peole with an offensive outlook. For example, something as simple as a '2012 apocalypse' believer. Or maybe they'll create a thread spouting how ignorant and stupid atheists are for not following the God of their choosing. They'll pick on sensitive subjects.

This applies to gaming exactly as it is intended. It is to poke at sensitive topics among the community of their choice (the flaws of a game in a forum/thread full of fans) in a certain way as to pull out the nerd rage from their victims.

If they succeed, and others fall prey to their 'troll-bait' by replying with a flurry of rage and insults, the troll receives exactly what it wants, epic lulz, thus 'feeding' the troll.

Now tell me anything other than the 'anarchists' falls into this explanation.

 

[Zydrate]

Yet another pointless list classifying different types of trolls.

Nothing new here, everyone. I wonder how this even bothered to be put up.

Allow me to be the first to say - I see what you did there.

And yet, it's still true :/

 

[BonsaiK]

Trolls, Haters and Flame War Generals? Thank You
Why marketers love the most savage members of the community.

What a great article.

If anyone wonders why I tell people off for making hate threads devoted to Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Ke$ha etc, then take this article and pretend the writer is talking about the music industry, and you might start to see where I'm coming from a little.

 

[dough]

Trolls help the things they hate.

Example; How many people had heard of Justin Bieber before he gained hatred on the internet?

I for one had no idea who Justin Bieber was. After a quick search on Google, Wikipedia tells me he's a fellow Canuck that "likes mennns balls" and has a video posted "on another mans penis."

Wikipedia is great.