Internet Trolling

Richard Bacon has an excellent article on the BBC website about the rise of 'internet trolls'. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17399027 These are people who post sometimes nasty, often unbelievable comments on various websites - for example, a news website, where readers are invited to leave a comment about a current news story. Just this morning, while reading the Mail website, there was a news piece about Lady Thatcher, and some of the readers comments made you wondered where the owners of these words actually live - the UK or some dark place in Africa. The comments range from 'she should be shot' to 'I'll be celebrating when she's dead'. And yet, you never seem to meet these sort in real life - my guess is that on the internet its all way too easy to post what you like and get away with it. Some high profile cases where idiotic comments on Twitter have resulted in arrests, quite rightly.

We've had a fair share of trolls on these forums, they are so easy to spot. Most newbies will start by introducing themselves and then ask a genuine question related to the nature of the forum. However trolls will reply to specific posts be it a current news event or a supposed injustice to someone or something, and it ends up in a massive argument between forum members. Credit to Sean, he runs a very well behaved and good mannered forum here at British Filipino and I'm glad to say everyone on here seem nice genuine people, whilst over on the dark side forum, the owner of that site seems delight at winding people up.

There are funny trolls and just plain nasty trolls. I think it takes a certain level of wit to be a good troll.. When I say a good troll allow me to explain what one is, a good troll will make comments or start a debate that is flawed, yet people get sucked in to argue with them, all for the trollers amusement. I have seen forums and other internet sites get torn apart by an argument started and controlled by a troll, usually leaving logic behind and just sticking with an argument no matter what.

Some trolls come in pairs, they will debate one another or back up each other against the more logical arguments of more known forum members. Usually one will make a bizarre post and hope to catch a fish (as they call it) and go from there.

Back in the early days of the internet I was sometimes a troll (mid nineties) on chatrooms, basically the technology was new and flawed and I found ways to change my name, my text colour as well as other peoples text colours. Basically I would get bored and change my name to that of a user who was a regular (also changing the font colour of my name to match theirs, so I had in effect hacked their account) and troll the users online. I would then log out and log back in again with a new username and await the return of the regular member who would get the abuse of people still enraged over "his" past comment. It was silly, I was in my late teens and that is what happens with teenagers.

Today though, we have a more nasty side that is coming out. Facebook is home to people who do little more than abuse other members. We have all seen the news stories of people committing suicide after bullies online had made their life hell. Twitter based celebrities get abused on a constant basis, some take the bait and give the abuse back at the troll - Manchester United player Wayne Rooney comes to mind when he told a troll when he would be training and where if said troll wanted to see if he was hard enough (the troll had berated Rooney with threats of violence). Though he is far from alone, other celebrities get berated and often by people who claim to be people within the business.

For forums though, trolls are limited in what they can do and are pretty easy to spot as Rob pointed out.

But as always the general rule of dealing with trolls is to ignore them, or to not feed the trolls....

I did some silly things with a Prime P400 in the mid 1970's, it had interactive terminals albeit that they were very very slow, but with interactivity you could hack it, not so easy to hack a Burroughs mainframe that required you to submit your programs on Hollerith punch cards

You are right Sean it was very different in days gone by and a lot of what happened was often out of a sense of adventure and exploration rather than any sense of malice.

Not like that now sadly.

Trolls are everywhere, the photography forums that I often visit are absolutely chock full of them, it's embarrassing how anal some of them are

I try not to comment but every now and then one of them winds me up enough

A friend of mine used to troll Facebook - with his actual profile, no fake accounts! He joined a few of the old groups and made stupid arguments and found it hilarious to the death threats he used to get. I used to read through these groups and giggle that people took him seriously, though I think if he did that today he might end up in a bit of trouble with the law.

There are certain groups of people who are prone to getting trolled. I would imagine the EDL get it all the time (though I have not been to their forum in a long time, gets boring) and a Jihadist forum got my attention after a few trolls went on there and never got banned, I remember one person in particular who claimed to be in Afghanistan and gloated over the killing of Taliban fighters, incensing the regulars but not a single person realised this was a troll.

But with most of the population now online I think it is to be expected to have plenty of idiots online as well. And those bad trolls who want nothing but to be malicious are everywhere, though mostly confined to Facebook and Twitter...

Hence, the very true saying "Don't feed the trolls"