Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Where Do Trolls Come From?
The New York Times now has definitive proof:
Before you dismiss this as harmless chatter, consider a 2014 article in the academic journal Personality and Individual Differences, titled “Trolls Just Want to Have Fun.” Three Canadian psychologists found that habitual Internet commenting is strongly correlated with hateful personality pathologies. The total amount of time spent posting comments online correlated positively with sadism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism. And this held especially true for those who relished “trolling,” the anonymous posting of negative and destructive comments. The 5 percent of participants who listed trolling as their favorite activity earned the highest scores on those unsavory psychological measures.
While removing trolls from the conversation has been key to Ricochet’s success, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a good answer to the old blogger’s question: Where do trolls come from?
The above study is certainly suggestive. People who are obsessed with degrading or attacking perfect strangers are probably not all there. The troll is not on the normal spectrum of political debate. Having been a political addict and blogger for more years than I care to mention, the range of political discourse I’ve seen goes something like this:
Academic and Civil – Imagine a group of broadly like-minded pundits discussing flat tax proposals. There’s a lot of technical jargon, more than a few obtuse jokes, and rarely do voices get raised above the level of private conversation in a local coffee shop. This is how you imagine Aristotle and Plato must have passed the time while wandering around the Academy.
Popular and Civil – Non-experts but with a reasonable amount of knowledge on the topic at hand chatting amiably. The jokes are less obtuse but still good-natured. Emotionally no one takes things too seriously. More than a few public policy cliches get swapped – “Guns Don’t Kill People, Criminals Kill People” – but there is a general level of respect. There is disagreement but no one thinks the other is side evil. If voices get raised too high it’s mostly because of the wine.
Neutral and Correct – There’s still a debate but the emotions have shifted from personal warmth to a semi-strained politeness. Think of a mildly awkward job interview, one where you’re uncertain if you have a shot at the position. Everyone in this type of political discourse is trying not to be rude but is privately convinced that the other side is possibly crazy, foolish, ignorant, or weird. Neither side believes their opponents to be evil.
Edgy and Tactless – There’s no deliberate rudeness. Not yet. The language gets a bit rougher, the sarcasm is less disguised, and the contempt is a bit more noticeable. If the conversation is online there is a surfeit of exclamation and question marks. Whereas with Neutral and Correct both sides think the other side is probably nuts, with Edgy and Tactless the suspicion is that your opponent is either dishonest or mildly fraudulent. Privately you know that you’d never, ever buy a used car from anyone who refuses to acknowledge how stupid/clever Sarah Palin really is.
Angry and Rude – The gloves are off and there’s a whiff of physical violence in the air. The tone goes from contempt and sarcasm to outright profanity. The working assumption on both sides is that the other side is genuinely evil. Not evil evil, but still pretty bad. The sort of people who’d run over wounded bald eagles for sport, but would probably draw the line at carpet bombing Sweden. If the discourse is happening online the exclamation marks get accentuated by the much beloved ALL CAPS!!!!!!!
Hitler – Physical violence is a possibility. All communication has broken down. You are utterly convinced that the other side is worse than Hitler. The animosity, however, isn’t personal exactly. You get no joy out of pointing out that so-and-so is Hitler. You are just very angry that people who think like Hitler are still hanging around at coffee shops, bars, and comment threads in 2015. There ought be a law but you’re not sure what kind.
The troll, I submit to you, gentle readers, is not anywhere on this spectrum. Nope. Not even at the much lamented Hitler level. There is a big difference between getting so engaged in an argument that you lose track of propriety and being a troll. The former is an honest error. The troll is a different genus. It’s the difference between finding trouble and making trouble.
The online world is a reflection of physical reality, distorted and sped up certainly, but even in a funhouse mirror you can recognize the particulars. We’ve all met real life trolls. They existed long before Tim Berners-Lee walked upon the earth. They have had different names down the generations, none of which I care to repeat.
Think of the obnoxious aunt who can’t stop bad-mouthing other relatives behind their back. The co-worker who alternates between being excessively friendly and absurdly inquisitorial. The passenger on the packed bus/subway/commuter train who just must, absolutely must, have the armrest or the three inches of someone else’s chair. These are people who live by provocation. They enjoy causing misery or annoyance in the lives of others. They derive some terrible satisfaction in crusading against a world clearly not as smart, noble, or wonderful as they imagine themselves to be.
There is more than a failure of charity or respect with the troll — there is a basic lack of humanity.
Published in Culture, General
I like your analysis. And thankfully, most trolls won’t pay for the privilege of trolling – keeping Ricochet pretty troll-free.
The weak hive attracts the wax moth.
They come from Media Matters and its fans.
Great list. What I wonder is how many people I know in person–who seem like normal, functioning adults–are somewhere between Angry/Rude and Troll online. I work with people who are crass (I’m in construction after all), but are otherwise pretty decent.
I don’t know *any* truly racist/misogynist/whateverist people (at least well enough to share their opinion), but you find them constantly online gameplay. Or, at least people who find it *hilarious* to joke about hanging slaves and becoming intimately familiar with one’s mother. These people are not hoping for a Klan resurgence, they are just psychopathic 14-24 y/o males who can’t enjoy life without kicking dirt in people’s faces.
Where do trolls come from? Beneath the bridge, of course:
They’re pretty thick under the Bridge to the 21st Century.
Blast! Y’all found me out. I guess it’s time for a second account and a pseudonym.
Ricochet 3.0: Rise of the sock puppets.
(If I had more skills, I would outfit each fist with a sock.)
This is of interest to me as well. As near as I can tell, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
It’s combination of the inner toxicity we all have within us and lax/inconsistent moderation (broken windows?) which creates a new norm of toxicity over time.
Gaming communities have been hit hard by this.
The game of League of Legends by RIOT Games, with millions of players, has tried (and is trying) different strategies to combat toxicity.
The Science Behind Shaping Player Behavior in Online games by Jeffrey “Lyte” Lin at Game Developers Conference 2013.
One of the things he says in his talk (and that a commenter at gamasutra reiterates) is that all of us can be jerks in short bursts. So even if you get rid of the full time jerks, once a culture is set it is very hard to get rid of the idea that it’s ok to be a jerk “sometimes.”
Add all those “sometimes” jerks up and it’s easy to perceive it as everyone being a jerk all the time when you are on the receiving end.
You may even be an occasional jerk yourself, but think that it’s ok because you are a jerk much less of the time than you are a decent human being.
related
From wherever they make the Trollhouse Cookies.
The other types you listed are playing a game, say perhaps chess. Some are playing well, some poorly; some are polite and some are rude the troll however as you noted will have none of this. The troll does not wish to place chess they wish to play a new game of their own invention titled, “Toss the chess board and pieces into the air while enjoying the reactions.”
Yeah, that and the “total amount of time spent posting comments online correlated positively with sadism, psychopathy and Machiavellianism” parts both come before the part about trolls.
But then Ricochet found a way to profit off us Machiavellian psychopaths, so I think it is pretty clear – free markets work.
Hillary directs the baking of those, in a sweatshop under the Bridge To The 21st Century.
In a serious vein, I think the troll is a species of sociopath. The spectrum Richard discusses runs from the mature and well adjusted to nasty children, but sociopathy lies outside normal humanity.
If Twitter taught us anything, never, ever feed the trolls. Let them die from starvation.
Just a friendly reminder that trolling, in the case of the internets, is not referring to the ugly fellow under the bridge who makes folks miserable. No, it is referring to fishing. A troll is deliberately fishing for responses, preferably emotional ones; a troll seeks so anger or upset you. They want you to dance to their tune, whatever that might be. They do it to manipulate you, either for the feeling of power, or loneliness, or just because it’s funny.
Someone being a jerk is not being a troll, though a troll is often being a jerk. A troll can be plenty civil; there is trolling on Ricochet all the time. The trolls might not think of themselves as trolling, since most of y’all are old (I’ve noticed very few under-30’s here) and have the idea of troll=jerk, but they are trolling nonetheless.
However, the old saw of “don’t feed the troll” is still very correct. The troll seeks validation, seeks response, whatever it is. If you don’t respond, the fisher doesn’t get his bite, and goes away hungry. The trick is recognizing the hook; sometimes someone is just being honest and looking for answers or discussion, but maybe have a hard time of getting that across.
Besides all this, where is that thread about elections in Turkey! Election results are wonderful news.
I found this ode to a troll on the late, great USS Clueless site:
The guy who in a packed concert crowd must push and bump into you from behind for the entire show. This guy will take every millimeter of space you give him if you shift your stance. I hate this guy.
Apparently from Scandinavia – maybe Aland?
The 5 percent of participants who listed trolling as their favorite activity earned the highest scores on those unsavory psychological measures.
Yes, but were they Trolling the psych test answers?
The article gets something wrong, which is ascribing trollishness to some monstrous “other”, a mistake made in many discussions of unpleasant things.
At the risk of mocking myself — trolling, like a great many things, is a behavior, not an identity. This means that, like genocide, serial murder, wire fraud, or jaywalking, trollism is not something that resides only in monsters. If there’s one lesson that I think sums up the human experience, it is that the very worst and the very best that humanity has to offer all comes from people just like you and me, but who made different choices along the way.
The alternative is to declare trolls a protected class, and excoriate any who criticizes them. After all, they were born that way.